Fireworks for the Fourth

I waited in line for over an hour in order to secure tickets to the Houston Symphony's performance at Miller Outdoor Theater and they had sold out before I could reach the box office.  Such a bummer, I was there before the office opened and everything.  I guess that free tickets on the Fourth of July mean you need to get there real early, which isn't worth it to me since the Symphony does several free shows at Miller Outdoor over the month of June.  So I went home with no tickets in hand and we decided to walk over for just the fireworks portion of the event.

At 8 pm, Finley started asking to go "night night".  We settled in for an episode of Sesame Street and crossed our fingers that she would stay up late enough for the fireworks show.  We left our house a little before 9 pm.  When we arrived, the Texas Tenors were still performing, which was neat to hear.  We couldn't get close enough to see anything, but the music was loud enough for us all to enjoy.  The music wrapped up around 9:15 pm and we thought it was time for fireworks.  We were very very very wrong.

Are these fireworks ever going to begin?

There was about a 15 minute intermission and the Symphony was back out again.  At this point, we were all restless and ready to see the fireworks.  The music kept going, the Texas Tenors came back out to perform more songs and I kept looking at my watching.  Surely the fireworks wouldn't start past 10 pm, that is illogical.  Finally around 10 pm, they announced it was the last song, The 1812 Overture, complete with real cannons.  The fireworks themselves didn't begin until 10:18 pm and we weren't home until after 11 pm. 

Watching the fireworks spectacular

Finley was quite a trooper, she mostly wanted to "walk walk walk".  The fireworks didn't seem to scare her at all, but she did grow bored of them after about 10 minutes.  I think it is because she was much more interested in walk walk walking.

Next year, we are going back to the fireworks show downtown. It is a much bigger spectacle and ends at a much more reasonable time.

Trying to get a good picture with mommy in the dark

Grocery Store Fun

Finley and I usually shop during the week, when the crowds are light and we have the store to ourselves. I had to run to the store this holiday weekend and I forgot the spectacle that the grocery store becomes. Finley got a balloon, a sticker and a balloon animal dog on a leash. She was also entertained by a live band and a patriotic clown, not to mention the crazy amount of samples that we enjoyed during our shopping.

Finley is a really good shopper, she is quite content to hang out in the cart and realizes that she gets the food when we get home.  It took us a bit to work through that, but I think the free samples are a big help.  Unless there is ice cream, that still causes a melt down.