Friends, Fun and Fireworks

This year we had a pretty good Fourth of July. Joe had Friday the third off, so we got to spend some time home together, which was nice. We did some shopping and got ready for the fourth. Originally we were going to have the old Elder's Quorum Presidency over for dinner, but due to illness and whatnot, only the Davis family was going to be coming over. (Did I even mention that Joe got released and is now the Sunday School President?)

On the morning of the Fourth we found a little visitor in our yard. Actually, Joe spotted this not-so-little guy hanging out on our garage door.

We've never seen snails around our house, so of course we had to play with him for a while and take his picture. Jacob was absolutely fascinated by him and asked if we could keep him for a pet.

The idea of a pet snail was not too appealing to me. Besides, I don't really know what they eat or what happens to them in the winter anyway. We went next door to show him to Will and then we released him back into the "wild"... a good distance from our house.

Then halfway through the day we had a brainstorm and realized that the Websters were home and didn't appear to have plans. So we invited them over for dinner too. We really should invite people over more often because we have such a great time whenever we get together with friends.

We had good food, played games and the boys got nice and messy in the sand box. Nathan Davis actually poured sand on Ephraim and Jacob's heads at some point because he is not versed in our sandbox rules as of yet. It was kind of funny, and I ended up rinsing the boys off before bed.

Of course after dinner when it got dark we headed off to our local fireworks show.

I have always wanted to take pictures of fireworks, but up until now I have never had a camera that could do a decent job of it. Now that I have my Canon XSi, I was determined to try it this year.

So Joe and I did some research on what settings to use, etc. Then we went to our chosen location, set up our tripod and started shooting. I think we ended up with some really nice photos!

The hardest part was making sure the fireworks were in focus, and making sure the tripod was pointed in the right place.

Timing the shots was also interesting because we were doing approximately 5 second exposures. So we never knew quite what would be in the picture until they were already taken.

It was a ton of fun though, and I loved the colors!

Jacob and Ephraim had a great time watching the show, sitting with the Websters and our other neighbors the Lees. They even gave Jacob a glowstick, which he thought was awesome.

After the show we went straight home and put the boys to bed. Luckily it seems that everyone in our neighborhood got their fireworks done the night before, so we got to go right to sleep.


I am not usually a fan of fireworks. I like the bigger shows put on by cities and towns, but not really the fireworks that go on in the neighborhoods. They seem more noisy and annoying than exciting to me.

But I have to say that I enjoyed the fireworks this year more than most... and I have something to show for it.