Wow, Wow, Wester!

Being a cop, T is required to work on most major holidays. Summer beer drinking holidays in particular. His new job is mostly days, but I was disappointed to find that he had to work one of his rare night shifts tonight. Wester has a big July 4th festival that ends with an impressive fireworks display. Since it is so flat out here in west Texas, we figured that we could probably see it from our backyard.

Not so much.

However, our neighborhood more than made up for the lack of professional fireworks displays. We live in the middle of a development on the outskirts of town. To the east of us are the houses were the big money lives. Our awesome neighbors (what are the odds that we would get great neighbors two houses in a row!) invited us out to do fireworks with them around 8:30. We live outside the city limits, so this is totally legal. We watched the kids light off jumping jacks and sparklers and roman candles for a while. I was secretly bummed that I was going to miss the big show.

Just before dark, I learned just how different life can be here in Wester. The rich neighbors started setting off fireworks to rival any of the municipal shows we ever had in Small Town. They might not have been coordinated to music, but the fireworks went on and on. We finally cried uncle around 10:50 and came back in the house. I hosed off the kids and got them to bed in record time.

As I type this, there are still MAJOR booms going on all around us. Happy birthday, Uncle Sam!