At 10am we go to a parade -- a band, a Go Kart, balloons aplenty, a bulldozer, various cars decked out in flags, various marchers, a little kid dressed up as Spiderman and escorted by his (her?) Dad. Interesting to see a small slice of Americana right here in DC, on Capitol Hill no less. This parade has been taking place for many years, but it's the first time we check it out. I'm not sure we even knew it took place before this year -- something about having a child, I suppose.
At 1:30 we head out to McLean to attend a picnic put together by a college friend of Kathy's that we've hardly seen in the 10 months since he and his family moved into the area (they're foreign service, and head for Kyrgyzstan in a couple of months). We'd love to stay for a while, but we're out of there after 90 minutes, so much left to do.
At 4:30 we're back in DC, amazingly enough no traffic getting back into town. We do a quick clean-up, and Kathy starts the food prep for having a small gathering of our own.
At 9pm, after we've finished dinner, about 12 of us head to our roof, where we can see the fireworks on the Mall (due West), and in pretty much every other direction. We've got the tallest roof on our side of the street, and are afforded pretty good views -- a veritable 360 of explosions continues long after the "big event" had finished, and several sites were still lighting up the sky when we finally left the roof at 10:30.
All in all, an active but very enjoyable holiday. I hope everyone's 4th of July was equally satisfying.
