Monday, July 5, 2010

Safety Lesson

Our good friends called us up on Friday to invite us over for the 4th of July.  We accepted the invitation and spent the morning of the 4th getting ready. Three families consisting of 6 adults and 11 kids would be there.  Food would be there:  grilled steak, hot dogs, homemade fries, salad, doctored up baked beans that even I liked, New York cheesecake, chocolate pie, brownies and ice cream, raspberry lemonade, and Mike's and Mojitos for the adults.  Because they live in the neighboring city where fireworks are legal, there would be some fireworks.

The food and company were excellent.  The adults talked while the kids ran, played, and climbed.  When night finally arrived, we head outside to light fireworks.

We started with sparklers which just wouldn't light.  We were using a long nozzle bbq lighter, which in the wind, was just NOT working.  We did finally get some lit for the kids, though Mika was too scared to hold one (she has a long standing fear of hot things like fire, stoves, and ovens).  While there were lots of sparklers left, we gave up on those and moved onto the adults-will-light-these-while-you-sit-and-watch items.  Our friends bought only the "safe and sane" legal fireworks from certified stands.  I was happy about that...it was part of the reason we were happy to join them.  The kids loved them even though they were little and didn't shoot into the air, with the except of the roman candles.  We all decided that the red hot roman candles were the best of the two varieties we had.  We also liked the blooming flowers, though the adults remembered them lasting a lot longer.  It was great.

Then some neighborhood young adults asked if they could light a few of theirs.  We agreed and found out they were the illegal kind that shot up in the air.  They were beautiful, and the kids loved them.  They did several.  Then things went wrong...one of the boxes, which lets off more than one bloom into the air, fell over.  It continued shooting out fireworks into the yards towards the houses.  Fortunately, it didn't shoot one at the kids, but it was a very real possibility as it spun with each blast and shot in a different direction.  It ended up sending fireworks at three different houses.  One projectile ended up in someone's hedge.  After a few minutes, one of the adults in our group noticed smoke still coming from the hedge, and upon inspection, we found the bush smoldering in the middle.  Fortunately, our friends had the hose ready.  We quickly dumped the bucket we were putting our spent fireworks in, filled it with water, and extinguished the embers.  That did it, but we dumped another bucketful on the spot to make sure. 

With that, the neighbors decided they'd quit while they were ahead, and we went on with our safe and sane fireworks.  We all appreciated the small ones after that, even the kids, who now know why those pretty fireworks that go off in the sky are illegal.

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