Celebrating Independence on the 4th of July: When The Kids Aren’t Around On the Holidays
Today is July 4th. Independence Day. The day we celebrate our freedom.
How do we Americans celebrate our freedom? With barbecues of course! Barbecues, fireworks, apple pie, decorated bike parades, and an assortment of lawn games. It’s an American tradition. We get together with our family and friends, eat too much watermelon and cake, decorated like a flag, all off of our red white and blue plates. We swim, we throw the frisbee or the football, and we may even throw in an old school game of “red rover red rover”. As the scorching sun lowers and day becomes dusk, we spray on the “OFF” and pass out sparklers to the kids, who then try to see how many words they can spell in the air before the sparkler burns out.
I love everything about it.
Unfortunately, that is not how my 4th of July is going to go this year. You see, I have teenagers. They all wanted to make “other plans”. I guess spending the day with your folks on July 4th isn’t that much fun after a certain age. One of them even said he didn’t consider it a “family holiday”. Interesting. The sad part is, I hadn’t actually planned anything yet, so I didn’t really have anything to offer them as an option to what they wanted to do. So, there will be no family barbecue. No bike parade this year either. ( ok, we’ve never done that.) No lawn games. Red Rover won’t be sending anyone over. Instead, I have one child at the beach, and the other two are spending the day with friends and their families. Probably enjoying barbecue on red white and blue plates…. and lawn games. (I’m fine, really) Todd and I are holding down the fort by ourselves this year. It’s a first. We are not quite sure what to do. Should we go see a movie? Get together with friends? Facebook stalk our kids? Maybe we’ll just stay home and enjoy….the freedom.
Today is July 4th. Independence Day. The day we celebrate our freedom. I guess my kids are celebrating a little freedom of their own today too.
There is something good about staying home and enjoying the freedom (of country, family, no cooking)of July 4th. Ours included mowing two yards, workshop projects, home repair projects, grocery shopping, washing,office stuff, couple of TV movies and sleeping in a bit. Ah, sweet freedom.