Fourth of July, 2004

Yesterday, Sharon and I hosted a Fourth of July picnic. Guests in attendance were my mom & dad, Sharon's mom & dad, Lynae, Mark and Sheri. Melissa showed up toward the end of the picnic. It was a small crowd, but that is the way that I wanted it to be. There are not as many people to have to try to entertain when the crowd is small.

Sharon and I grilled hamburgers, hot dogs and bratwurts, and Sharon made some side dishes containing baked beans, sour cream, mayonaise and possibly other evil materials. I cooked a few turkey burgers, much to my mother's chagrin. She advised me to keep the turkey burgers away from everything else on the grill. I complied, or at least I tried to comply, since I know first hand what it is like to be obsessively picky over eating certain foods.

Jim, Mark, Dad and I played a few games of horseshoes. Dad made several ringers, just like he did when we played up at Jim and Alice's house on Mother's Day. He said that he is ready for the pro circuit at Smurf's in Montrose. That gave us a chuckle. He continued his winning ways yesterday, and fortunately I was paired up with him. He and I defeated the non-Vajentic Schreck/Irwin team two different matches. However, Mark did beat me in a 'mono y mono' match.

I set up the badminton net behind the fence in our backyard. I was pleased that the badminton set that Sharon had bought was actually easy to set up, and somewhat durable. Hopefully, it will be easy to set up next time also, after it has gone through an Eric Vajentic teardown procedure. Mark and I played badminton after a break from our horseshoe match. Both sides had a disadvantage. One side was staring directly into the sun, while the other side had to deal with the mound of dirt still there from when I dug the garden behind the fenceline. Mark didn't put up much of a challenge. We switched sides after it was 8-0 so that Mark would have the non-sun side, but he didn't seem to be to dedicated to the match. Later, Jim and I played, and it turned out to be a fierce battle. The score was close the whole match, and I edged him out at the end, 15-13.

Earlier in the day, Dominic and I went to Crazy Harry's south of Liberty on Highway 291 to buy some fireworks. We picked out a selection and spent about $75 on them. Dominic wasn't that interested in the snakes. He liked the sparklers, but he wanted to shoot off the big stuff. We had a couple of cool rockets that shot up high into the sky. I also bought some good spinners, and waterfalls that had bright sparks. I got some bottle rockets, black cats and tanks, but those were not all that exciting. I had various other explosives also. I think that I liked the spinners the best, with the rockets coming in a close second.

Dominic seemed to be getting a little bit tired and cranky when it began to get dark. I think he may have been getting tired of the firecrackers. Actually, he was not quite himself during most of the day. I think he was still feeling a little bit weak from being sick the night before. But, he did well overall, and brought joy to the picnic as always.

We wrapped things up around 10 or 11. I cleaned up the big firework debris, but left everything else for the morning. I was pretty darn tired by the end of the day. We didn't spend too much time in our backyard after dark, so the Tiki torches and Sharon's hanging lights weren't on display very long. I did make a point to go back there at the end of the night though, and I swung with Mom & Dad for awhile. They left early this morning to get back to Iowa to work on their yard.