The fireworks that never were.

We decided this year that we would keep the kids up late on the 4th of July and take them to see fireworks. They had been hearing them quite a bit from our neighbors and were getting pretty curious. The outdoor mall by our house does a big display every year so we thought we would drive to the Schmome Schmepot parking lot which overlooks the mall and we would have a pretty good view. We all piled into the car and took off about 9:00 pm, it had been raining and was pretty cool so I had put warm clothes on the kids and brought their blankies. We rushed up there thinking they might have already started, but they hadn't and we were able to get a prime spot. We all climbed into the back of the truck and waited, and waited, and waited. We ended up closing the back door and just rolling down the back window so the kids could look out. Except for a few cranky moments, the kids were great and had a blast! They just knew they were out late and doing something exciting and different, they just had no idea what. We saw a few fireworks going off in some random directions but the ones from Schmouthlands never went off. Finally, after waiting an entire hour for these stinkin' fireworks, we got back into the car and drove over to the mall to ask one of the security guys what was up. He said they weren't having fireworks this year which they had posted on their website but he had still had at least 100 people ask him that night. So we went home to check and sure enough, it said right there on their site which Chris and I had both looked at earlier but had obviously misread. But we weren't the only ones, there were several of us suckers sitting in that parking lot waiting for the fireworks to start. It was disappointing because the kids were really excited to see them, so when we got home Chris set off the (legal) fireworks he had gotten and we watched from the house. The kids loved them and asked for more, but that was all we had and it was 10:30 and time for bed.

It ended up being such a fun night and one we will probably be laughing about for awhile.