JACK, TEDDY & US

July 4th ExtravaDanza.

This July 4th has been a good one. First crazy thing that happened today: Becca Piser happened to be in town, so we met her in Dupont for lunch - and brought Ted so she could ride him. Here's the pic we took for Deb.

















We tried a new fireworks watching spot this year, too. We went down to Iwo Jima and it turns out that the vantage point is PERFECT. The skyline looks incredible - and a ton of people had the same idea, but it wasn't nearly as packed as the National Mall celebration, emceed by everyone's favorite manny, Tony Danza and headlined by Elliott Yamin (the dude from American Idol who is actually really good). Teddy was fantastic during the whole thing. He actually sat in my lap and watched the fireworks for a little bit! (As always, click to enlarge the pics.)




















The second unexpected thing today - bats flying overhead during the fireworks display - a lot of them! And the third - I kept thinking the colorful lights from across the Potomac were lighting up the faces of all of the spectators. Then I realized that what I was seeing were the glowing lights of cell phones...hundreds of camera phones taking pictures of the celebration. Welcome to the 21st century.

I really like big community events in DC. It didn't hit me quite as hard as it did at the Kite Festival, but I always look around and notice all of the different kinds of people that come together for things like Capitol 4th, the Memorial Day Celebration, the Cherry Blossom Festival, etc. Everyone gets into it - partially because everyone can. Seems like every event here is free, and therefore is accessible to everyone. People start parking their cars in the shoulders of huge roads like 1-395, the GW Parkway, etc. really early in the day in order to get a quality view - and the police are cool with it. They even assist by shutting down enormous bridges and rerouting traffic patterns so we can all walk in the street. Even the airline pilots flying into National Airport were caught up in the excitement. We watched a few planes tip their wings so their passengers could ooh and aah at the pretty lights. Very cool. If anyone wants to visit next year, we'll show you.

T, J, & M - hope your BBQ was fantastic. Wish we could have been there!

posted by sandy @ 11:36 PM