The Good Witch: Polish, Pictures and Pixie Dust: The Third of July and other Disasters

Growing up, I always looked forward to the summer time. Long nights spent playing outdoors, catching fireflies with my cousins… Playing in the sprinkler and having the odd water balloon fight… Spending long summer months at my grandparent’s house in Wichita and loving every minute of it (except for when I got into trouble) and of course- my birthday.

I hear the same old story every year. On July 3, 1981 at 9:28am I was brought into this world. Weighing in at 8lbs, but three weeks early, the doctor told my mother that if she would have carried me to term, I would have weighed 11 pounds. The only reason I was considered a preemie was the fact that my feet had no creases on the bottoms… Which to this day, I still have completely smooth feet.

Over the years, the birthday parties have ceased, presents few and far between, but the sentiment is still there. Granted, I still consider myself as 29 and holding… I try not to publicize the fact that my birthday came and went.

This year, I tried for a little something different. I decided to “host” a little barbeque. Just me and the fam and our “extended family”, one of my past seniors and her mom. And it was a blast. We BBQ’d, the kids played with sparklers and water balloons, they enjoyed watermelon. Fun was had by all… And here’s a graphic account for all the masses to enjoy.

The birthday cake Tria had made. I was in hog heaven. Not only was it Hello Kitty themed- it was funfetti cake as well! AND she spelled my whole name. I haven’t seen that on a cake in…. Well hell since my name was spelled out when I was three years old in those nasty hard candy letters lol

Showing a little more Hello Kitty love (can you tell I like Hello Kitty???)

Cubby enjoying some watermelon. I love his freckles and beautiful blue eyes. He’s gonna be a lady killer someday.

Hubs showing off our first time purchase- the Poopy Puppy. I saw it and had to get it- if not just for the name LOL It was somethin else LOL

So… After Charles pulled the fuse out of the Poopy Puppy’s…. Er… Posterior… He put it on a stick…… God there is like no way this sentence can sound right…. Upon lighting it afire, we were graced with a large display of sparks and fire coming out of its hindquarter region. Just about the time we figured it would stop, there was a loud pop and whistle, a large amount of smoke and then a “snake” popped out and proceeded to grow on the concrete. Oh god, our nasty potty-brained selves laughed our butts off at this display. Had to be the best thing EVER.

And then it got dark. I didn’t spend a lot of money (much less than I spent last year- I was so proud of myself) on fireworks. All I got were the regular sparklers, smoke bombs, snakes, poppers, etc. Cubby was super excited because we had given him the green light to pop off the fireworks himself and he was in hog heaven. Here he is lighting a strobe firework (which we were erroneously told were illegal- which they aren’t). The kids got a kick out of making all of us laugh at their incredibly hilarious antics. Most of the time they looked like they were something straight out of an old-time movie.

Whilst we were doing that, our neighbors next door were popping off their fireworks, which I must say- were much more interesting than ours by a long shot. This shot was taken with no flash at all at night. The only illumination was from the fireworks and the street lights. While the color version of this picture is pretty in and of itself, the black and white version is much more striking.

Tria decided to get the sparklers out and I got this awesome shot of her trying to get her sparkler to re-light. It really looks like she’s one of those fire breathers from an old time circus.