I hope you all had a wonderfully explosive Independence Day! I took Friday off, as most people did, for an extended four-day holiday weekend, which turned out to be more low-key than most of our fourths of July in the past.

We kicked things off Thursday morning with some pancakes in Elmwood Park at the DCRP pancake breakfast. We got to rub elbows with a congressman and a few other familiar faces as we got pancakes and sausage served up by the Mayor, the Governor, and a few other folks running for office.

Our friends the Mills came (as did my dad, briefly) and shared a table with us, and we hung around with them a bit afterward to play in the adjacent playground. Lollipop the Clown was also on hand, making balloon animals for the kids, which we miraculously kept intact before we finally headed on home.

We had a fairly quiet afternoon before having Jack and Donna and grilling up some burgers for dinner. A little later, my folks came by with Nathan and Jonathan and we set off some fireworks in the street as one big patriotic family. Donna even brought some ice cream for us to enjoy halfway through the evening. We were able to set off nearly every fountain, Roman candle, and artillery shell before our eleven o’clock “curfew” (set by the city), and we were able to whip out a handful of sparklers as well.

Aaron, however, somehow crashed in bed shortly before we started setting things off and couldn’t be roused (either by us or the noise).

The next day, we marked a milestone for our kids by showing them the Lion King for the first time, which traumatized Hannah halfway through (of course). Then on Saturday, we had a birthday party for our old friend Timothy. The Mathis family has been living abroad in Thailand for a couple years, and we’d last celebrated a birthday with Timothy in 2013. The kids played on a sprinkler mat in the backyard and picked some mulberries together. A little later we had lunch, a cake, and also a piñata for the kids to break apart. A handful of our mutual friends showed up as well, so we got to catch up with them a bit before calling it a day.

We kept things fairly quiet afterward, settling the kids into some summer break activities. We also got Aaron his first legit Big Boy Bed, nabbing both a twin mattress and bed frame with drawers all for the low price of absolutely nothing. Aaron gave it a good test-run with Hannah and seems to approve.

In other news, Burger King has Tacos.