The last installment of my July 4th stories until next year. The Sanduskys went to their city's annual 4th of July Celebration.
We have just gotten up.
It is 12 noon, but we have just awakened; we didn't get home from our city's annual "Fourth of July BLAST!" Celebration until 12:30 this morning, and we had been there all day. The kids were all absolutely wiped; and so were we!
The festival was held yesterday, all day, in downtown Nashville, and things got started at 8 a.m. with a pancake breakfast; and then the parade started an hour later. Several of the children were in the parade, riding on one of the floats; this was why we had to be there early. After the parade, we then had planned on looking in at some of the contests they had planned; but then one of the festival officials came up to me and my husband, and he had told us that one of the scheduled bands had been involved in an accident on the way here; and they were wondering if our daughter, Ronee', could fill in and sing. Ronee' was a little surprised, but of course, she said yes, so we had to run backstage and help her get ready. At 11 she went on; she was on stage for a half hour.
At 12 noon, we went to the picnic grounds, and we feasted on barbequed hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad, pickles, beets, and potato chips; and we also had ice cream or watermelon for dessert. It was when we were at the picnic grounds that we had run into M'buti and her husband Roberto; and so they joined us for lunch. They were with M'buti's brothers, Keserian and Naiser, who had unexpectedly flown in from their home in Africa; and we were all glad to see them. Their oldest son, Jubaki, now three years old, was with them; their younger twins, Eshe and Kibarake, were with Roberto's parents. They decided to stay home for the Fourth, and they wanted to get to know their two youngest grandchildren, so they had the two babies.
After we rested from lunch, the kids wanted to try their mettle at some of the carnival games or ride some of the rides they had set up, so they did; and we watched them until 4:30, where we then went back to the main stage area and helped Ronee' get ready for what HAD been her regularly scheduled concert time. Ronee' then delivered a spirited performance, and she was well received from the audience, especially when she sang "God Bless America". She was on stage for an hour, from 5 to 6. She also got a lot of applause when she had her brother, Johnny, come up, where they then sang a song they had co-written together, "Let Freedom Ring!", which was, in turn, going on a CD that Ronee' was going to be recording in a few weeks.
At six, we watched some of the other musical acts perform, and at 8, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra took to the stage for some patriotic music which would then lead to the fireworks. Of course, more people managed to stream into the festival venue, and by 8 there were hardly any seats left, and one could see the traffic lined up, bumper to bumper, as they were coming in to view the fireworks show. At 9:30, right on the dot, during the playing of the National Anthem, a pair of pair of SR-71's flew over the festival site, rattling the ground, people's bodies, and the sky; the noise was deafening, and at the sound, Johnny ducked his head under my armpit and started to cry. The fireworks then started going off, and it was nothing short of spectacular. We saw some firework formations we had never seen before, and everybody was ahhhing and oooing and ohhhing as they lit up the sky and echoed throughout the festival grounds. It was like a constant roll of thunder, that was how loud the fireworks were (but it was nothing like the pair of SR-71's; our ears were still ringing from the aircrafts' flying overhead!). The fireworks display was a very long one; it lasted well over a half hour in length.
The fireworks display was touted as one of Nashville's biggest, which explained for the huge crowd; and traffic, of course, was a nightmare; we left at 10:30, and didn't get home until 12:30 this morning!
As you can see, we had a lot of fun at Nashville's annual Fourth of July celebration, and we plan on doing it again next year.
Or maybe we'll get adventurous and go to one of the bigger ones--like maybe to the one in Dallas, Texas, where they were reported to have the second biggest fireworks display in the NATION!
Sounds like a lot of fun, we wnent to the fourth of July Celebration at our biggest Loca Churchw as there from ten in the miorning till eight at night, and was exhasted byy the time wre got home, but we all had fuin..>
God Bless
~Michelle~
We have just gotten up.
