What's that Green stuff?

What's that green stuff? Is it a Lake? (S)

No, it's grass. (J) Said while watching the Capitol 4th celebration on PBS tonight.

We realized our kids had never seen fireworks, and to help them stay up a bit for the real thing, we let G and S watch some on television. We started with the Capitol 4th, which opened with an opera singer performing the Star Spangled Banner at the National Mall. The mall elicited the lake comment from S. But then the Capitol 4th moved on to Huey Lewis and the News , so J moved on to Mike Rose (Dirty Jobs) grease a pig, a bit of baseball and Nascar, and a Backyardigans episode. And then the fireworks were finally on. Amazingly, the fireworks weren't all that to the kids, at least on tv.

So we gave up on G staying up, as it was pretty obvious she wouldn't make it. S on the other hand... I've never seen the kid so excited. We watched the 360 degree show from our house, until our neighbor started to light roman candles in the alley so we went outside. Then we realized another neighbor was starting his show around the corner, so we walked three houses down to watch there. The neighborhood shows started around 9 and go until 11pm - there is no official city show, since every block seems to put on their own show. Since we're on a bit of a hill, there are fireworks in every direction; you just listen for the mortars being shot and pivot to watch. S was so thrilled to be outside, watching the show that he ran in circles in the neighbor's yard while screaming "Fireworks! Fireworks!" G slept through the whole thing -- thank you white noise machine and fan. Maybe next year for her...