A New Tradition For The Fourth?

Yesterday was the Fourth of July - and in our town, it was the day we held our parade to celebrate the holiday.  It.  Was.  Hot.  The thermometer in my car as I drove to the parade before 9am read 93 degrees.  It was beyond humid, and the seats I usually have in the shade near the beginning of the parade route had already been claimed, so we spent two and a half hours sitting in the blazing sun with only a periodic breeze and a couple kind marchers handing out water or freeze pops to keep us from overheating.

Of course, this year only Little Miss and I watched the parade with my parents.  Mister Man's Cub Scout pack was walking in the parade, so we convinced him to walk, as well.  He was excited about it - his first parade, he got to wear his Cub Scout uniform, and he was to pass out candy.  Knowing how hot it was, I was a little concerned about how he would enjoy it, but he insisted he wanted to go.

When I arrived home fifteen or so minutes before my husband and Mister Man who had to hike from the end of the parade back to where he'd parked his car near the beginning of the parade, I put Little Miss into a cold water bath.  She was that hot.

He was hotter.

My husband had to find a hose to spray the poor kid off as they were still walking back to his car because Mister Man was starting to feel sick.  When I asked him how he liked it, I got a dirty look. Apparently the heat was my fault.  He declared that he was never again going to walk in a parade.  I tried to explain that it wasn't normally so hot; in fact, we are having an unusually hot summer in Chicago.  Normally, we have four days in June over 90 degrees, but this year we had 20.  The 103 degree heat was only the second time in recorded history - 142 years' worth - that hit 100 or more on July 4.

He wasn't impressed.  Mom, he said, it wasn't just hot.  My feet were sore, too.

I pressed him further since we hike further than that on a regular basis.  By "sore" he meant that they were hot and uncomfortable, too.  He's still not convinced that he's ever going to march in a parade again, but I'm working on it.  Watching him was a treat for me... and here's hoping it's a little cooler for all of us.

Today?  It's still hot.  In fact, it's still so hot that it's actually too hot to go to the pool.  How are you coping with weather where you are?

Mister Man Has a Message

Brand new giveaway for e.l.f. cosmetics here.

And I have a chance to win tickets to The Emperor's New Clothes from the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre here for my Chicago friends.

***

Yesterday, Mister Man was playing very nicely in the foyer for a period of time. I assumed he was sketching his dinosaurs or reading, which is what he usually is doing. When he came into the kitchen where I was preparing dinner, he asked me to come see what he'd done.

Of course, I followed.

He led me to the front door and proudly showed of his creation:

Nope, not the weather wheel. That was Little Miss's (although if you recall, Mister Man made a weather wheel in preschool a few years ago, too). With his love of art and his interest in spelling, Mister Man wanted to be sure we had appropriate decorations in our house for the Fourth of July and created this completely unprompted.

He's a pretty cool kid, I think. I'm impressed that he even got almost all the stripes right - just short one - and I don't think he had a model when he made it.

Happy Fourth of July, from us to you!

Recipe For A Successful Fourth Of July Parade

As I think about this, really I'm two days late on this post. But bear with me, this is information that you can store up for your town's next major event that includes a parade.

Having two small children who enjoy watching parades, I've had to quickly learn how to strategically get the most out of them with the minimum amount of pain. I've never been a huge fan of parades and rarely watched them before the advent of the wee ones. Now we go to two parades a year -- the Fourth of July parade and a local Lions parade.

I've learned several things along the way that help to ensure a smooth experience. Take note:

1) Know what time you need to save a "good" spot for your parades. Ensure someone is there with the appropriate space saving items by that time. Preferably, send one person ahead with the remaining members of the party staying at home until the last possible moment. This minimizes down time until the parade entertainment appears.

2) Said person should ensure that they can carry all items in one trip. Making multiple trips to and from the car is not pleasant. And it could result in losing the treasured spot.

3) If you're using blankets to sit on, bring along a tarp. Place the tarp on the ground and the blankets atop the tarp. This prevents the nasty surprise of a wet bottom or soaked blanket at the end of the parade. Blankets are also a huge help when trying to save a larger space, as they take up space without making you look like a space hog.

4) Bring along something to entertain yourself while waiting for the rest of the party to appear. Personally, I prefer trying to catch up on some newspaper reading, but others may prefer a book or People. Your call on that one, really. Bringing along a drink and/or snack depending on how long you'll be sitting there is also a smart idea.

5) Don't forget the plastic bags. Strategically, you want at least one plastic bag for each child with an extra one for garbage. The garbage includes all the political pamphlets that you just couldn't say no to, along with the empty candy wrappers and water bottles that somehow appear during the parade. The other plastic bags are a convenient way to collect the items thrown during the parade, as well as being a great opportunity for your poor, adorable child to finagle an extra of some special, desired item from a particular float. Just teach your child how to hold out the bag in front of a volunteer and look really sad.

6) If you have small children, try to get a spot near the beginning of the parade. This is again less downtime before they see the parade and you have the added benefit of being able to leave before the giant smash of traffic as more and more people have viewed the end of the parade.

7) Teach your children not to poach. There is an unwritten rule that the items thrown in front of your seated area is "yours" to gather. Having mobs of children running up to grab candy from "your" area when you have small (and therefore slower) children is frustrating to the younger children. Plus, in my opinion, teaching your children respect of others and their space will benefit them in the long run.

8) Set a limit on how much candy can be eaten during the parade. Forgetting this rule can create severe problems later in the day (not that I'd know anything about this).

9) Teach children what candy they can and cannot eat. For example, Little Miss knows not to eat the gum. They both know that any Twix or Snickers thrown near them need to be given promptly to Mommy for safekeeping. Yeah, that's right. Safekeeping. Oh yeah, and if candy has broken open while skidding on the ground, don't eat it!

10) When the parade is over, clarify with adults and children who is in charge of watching each child to ensure no one wanders away. Yes, there's a whole post coming on this one....

What rules am I missing? Let's complete this list!

And The Winner Is ....

Well, it's the Fourth of July and it's now 8:05pm. I'm right on time with counting the entries, numbering them and running the random number generator. Yay, me!


A couple of caveats first.



1) My apologies to everyone who posted information about their favorite pets that I didn't respond to. To be honest, the 52 comments overwhelmed me. Can you tell I'm not used to this much traffic and love?



2) I did, however, respond to the first 12 commenters with two comments of my own. Those ended up being comments #13 and #14. To keep things simple, I didn't renumber the comments after me to take the place of #13 and #14 because being out in the sun all day baked my brain too much for that to work. Instead, if the random number generator had picked #13 or #14, I would simply have run it again. If it chose #26, that was the 26th comment vs removing my two comments and renumbering.



3) I tried really hard to figure out how to paste the random number generator into my post as I've seen other people do. Unfortunately technology doesn't like me and never has (yep, a post on that coming shortly!). The best I could do was copy and paste, but I don't think it's nearly as pretty. My bad.



ANYway! Thank you to all who entered. I had a lot of fun with the contest and hearing about your pets. You were all great sports, and I hope you'll come back to read my blog again! I did get my prize assembled, and pictures of it are below. It was a mystery prize, and I thought about keeping it a surprise until the winner had received it, but I'm too impatient for that!

It started out being a packaged of three books, a variety that I hope would suit someone's tastes. Sandra Brown's The Alibi, Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Wife, and Mary Higgins Clark's Before I Say Goodbye. I've read and enjoyed all three, so I can vouch for them. Ok their quick and easy reads when you just want to turn your brain off -- although Amy Tan's is really good and one I've reread three or four times.



Then I decided to add some more fun to it. And fortunately Karen has children, so hopefully this won't go to waste. What kid wouldn't love drinking from this cup with the oh so funky straw?



And when the cup is dirty, said child can use this special Spiderman straw instead.



And if you're going to have drinks, you definitely need snacks!

Since today is the Fourth of July, I felt like I had to throw something patriotic in there. We have flags out the wazoo from all the decorating we do for Memorial Day and other events, so I was able to dig up four flags. And the squeezy stars are pretty cool. They handed them out in today's parade, and when I was putting the box together tonight, the wee ones wanted to donate them to the cause, as well.

Going with the theme of items that were handed out in today's parade, I'm also going to toss in two of the multitude of bubbles handed out in today's Fourth of July parade (just for fun!). If you'll notice, each of the bottles includes a coupon for a buy one get one offer from the local chi-chi soaps and lotions store. If you're ever going to be in the neighborhood, save the labels and bring them in!

As I started packing the box, I realized that I needed some packing material. And what better packing material than candy? Can you tell that Werther's and Jolly Ranchers are my favorites?

And I hate to say it, but I was also going to include a fun orange frisbee for kicks, but unfortunately it wouldn't fit in my box. So I'm going to hold onto in until I decide what to do with it.

Now everyone is either drooling over the prizes or crossing their fingers hoping they don't win. So without further ado, the winner is:

Search RANDOM.ORG
True Random Number Service
Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:23
Timestamp: 2008-07-05 01:02:32 UTC

Commenter #23!

And I'll be nice... I won't make you dig through all the posts to find who that was. Karen, one of my regular (I hope!) readers, had the luck of choosing this. Fortunately for me, she does have children, so the cup et al won't go to waste -- I hope!

Karen, I'm sending you an email to get mailing info. Your responsibilities are to create a Pay It Forward contest of your own and keep this group effort going! If you aren't up for this, let me know, and I'll choose a new winner. Somehow, I have a feeling you can do it, and I might even have an inkling of what your giveaway prize might be. (But that's being awfully presumptuous of me!) Anyway, congrats, Karen! And thank you again to everyone for playing!

Oh yeah... and Happy Fourth of July! By the way, YES we've had tons of random loud unsafe fireworks going off for days and days (not 11 days as with last year thankfully) and I currently can hear them from three sides. My town's fireworks aren't until July 12, however. Hmmm....

We're Three For Three!

Don't forget, tomorrow is the last day to enter the Pay It Forward contest. If you haven't entered already, you have until 8pm CST.

*********************

Today was the last day of summer school for Mister Man. So sad... no more getting picked up by the bus at 8:30 and being dropped off around noon five days a week. On the plus side, since he still naps (at least some days and needs down time on others), we'll be able to do more playdates with his friends.

Today was a special day at his preschool though. It was the official Fourth of July Parade for them. All the parents are invited to watch them come walk around the outside of the school near the end of the day and then have a picnic and eat popsicles.

As the PTO president for next year (yeah, I'm a sucker), it was my job to get the 150 popsicles to the school before the parade. I busted my rear to ensure they were there since I found out that this was needed on Tuesday and was working on Wednesday in the office.

What's fun about that? Apparently with our massive storms last night (I drove home from work at times going 15-20 mph knowing there was a street in front of me but not always sure where it was), the power to the school went out. Guess what happened to the popsicles that were in her freezer. The school sent someone out this morning to buy more popsicles from Jewel, but I still felt bad that this happened -- and that they didn't call me to help fix it.

On the positive side, the hat decorations they made this year were pretty cool, weren't they?


And yes, Daddy dressed him. That's why he's in his birthday party Thomas shirt instead of something more patriotic. At least it's blue, right? He was so happy to see us along the route. And his USA necklace is now a treasured possession at home. As is his patriotic maraca!

Little Miss really enjoyed her popsicle. Mister Man also had a popsicle, but he ate his so fast that I couldn't even find him to take a picture before it was gone. And yes, she is wearing a sweater on July 3. Granted, it wasn't the warmest day here today, but my mom is a freak. She's always cold, and I have pictures of me as an infant in Hawaii with a hat with earflaps on. And once Little Miss got it on, it was not coming off, much like the raincoat incident from last weekend. Oh yeah, and she got bit by mosquitoes on her eye, back and right arm again earlier this week when Daddy let her play in the backyard late in the day with no bug spray. Poor kid!

Then we got back to normal for us at a preschool type event where children are invited. They ran around and played and had a great old time. Little Miss spent most of her time on the playground equipment. It makes a big circle up high, connected to various apparatus, and she had fun running around and around the circle.

Mister Man spent more of his time on the "big kids" playground, which include this tire swing. He asked the little girl who was playing on it first so very nicely if he could also get on and swing, and she let him. He had a ton of fun going around and around -- probably because he made her do all the work!

It all looks fun, right?

Let me review the history, however.

At Back to School Night for Little Miss's preschool, they had an ice cream social that we all went to. As the kids were running around and playing, I suddenly heard a scream (Daddy was on duty for watching at the moment) and recognized Little Miss's voice.

As I ran over to the girl who never is bothered by falling down and appears to not feel pain frequently, I could see blood streaming down her fact. Not exactly a good sign. Some friends grabbed napkins for me so I could staunch the bleeding and see where it was coming from. We needed an ice pack from the school to finally stop the bleeding. Apparently in all their running, some of the bigger kids had gotten a bit overexuberant and managed to run into her hard enough to split her lip open.

At the next preschool event, Little Miss was running again at the Valentine's Day fundraiser. Actually, all the kids were running; I can't single her out. And again she somehow managed to bite through her lip and bleed all over the place, necessitating an ice pack.

So while I have some lovely pictures of the wee ones playing at the picnic, let me reassure you that there was crying involved.

Right after the picture of Little Miss was taken, she managed to run headfirst into a boy who was running the same circle in the opposite direction. They bounced off each other, and each landed flat on the back. He got up with no problems, but she screamed! Fortunately, there was no blood this time, but she did get a nasty bump and bruise on her nose. Poor girl.

After she was happy again, I put Daddy in charge of her and went off to find Mister Man. He was on the tire swing, which is where that picture was taken. When he decided he was finished, he climbed off the swing backwards. And misjudged the size of the hole under the swing. He fell flat on his back and burst into tears. Sweet, two wee ones crying within a span of three minutes.

As a side note, when a child falls into older mulch, it's VERY dirty. And when they try to crawl into your lap when you comfort them, you the filth is immediately transferred to you. Fortunately, it brushes off fairly well. And yes, he's fine, as well. He ended up with a red mark from the bump on his side but was soon off playing again.

Anyway -- Happy Fourth of July to you all. Here's hoping you have a happy and safe one! And enjoy the parades. I'll share the story of our parade last year one day soon, I promise.

It's The Fourth of July!

… or some of my neighbors apparently think.

While I admittedly live in the suburbs, it isn’t like I’m in the middle of unincorporated nowhere. Fireworks are illegal in Illinois. Some people near me don’t quite get this however.

For the past two years, the Fourth of July has been a month long celebration. Actually, I shouldn’t exaggerate. It only seems like a month. It’s generally been 11-13 days. And when I mean celebration, I mean one to two hours’ worth of fireworks going off on a nightly basis. These celebrations aren’t the cute little popping things but actual real large fireworks. And the celebrations go on until 11pm or later.

The first year we lived here, I closed the windows, gritted my teeth and put a pillow over my head – all to no avail unfortunately. I don’t tend to be one of those people who falls asleep easily and being irritated really prevents me from sleeping. And unfortunately, Little Miss is a lighter sleeper than I am and the least noise wakes her.

Last year, armed with the knowledge that the fireworks weren’t simply a one or two night occurrence, I decided to inform the local authorities if they got too bad. So on June 28 last year, we heard the first 45 minute celebration.

The next night, my husband took a bit of a drive in a neighborhood behind us. We found the culprits. In fact, it was really easy, as neighbors were dragging large coolers to their house. Nope there wasn’t going to be a loud series of fireworks that night or anything!

At 9:45 on the dot, the fireworks started going off. At that point, we realized that we didn’t know technically which police to call. We live right on the cusp of two counties (literally my neighborhood is half in one county and half in another). And there are three possible towns that neighborhood could be a part of or it could be one of the tiny bits of unincorporated land. Fortunately, when there are large fireworks parties going on, the police are quite helpful in tracking down who’s in charge.

About 20 minutes later, there was an abrupt ceasing of fireworks activity. And then twenty minutes later, I believe they let off their entire remaining stockpile at once. Neighbors down the street also apparently had some fireworks issues, as my husband saw the cops talking to them one night as he was trying to figure out who the moron was shooting off fireworks that close to our houses. Someone apparently didn’t like that idea either.

For the last two nights, we’ve had the random bottle rocket go off here and there at night, but nothing like what we saw last year. Then again, it’s only June 13, so maybe they’re practicing to be sure that the month long celebration is up to snuff.

However, it’s 3:45pm right now, and I’m currently hearing occasional fireworks. Isn’t the joy of fireworks seeing them? At night? When they’re visible due to lack of other light? Someone please explain.

And don’t get me wrong. I love fireworks. They’re gorgeous and fun and cool, and I love to see the new developments they’ve created each year. But not at 11pm when I’m trying to sleep. Night for a two week stretch. And definitely not in enough proximity to my house that I worry about one landing on my roof and starting a fire. Oh, and don’t get me started on the unattended large illegal burning people do sometimes by my parents’ house!