{"id":3753,"date":"2013-07-09T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=3753"},"modified":"2013-07-08T21:40:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T01:40:12","slug":"quatro-do-cinco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/quatro-do-cinco\/","title":{"rendered":"Quatro do Cinco"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sister Allison’s brother-in-law (S) was visiting from San Francisco this past week, and we pulled out all the stops to make sure he had a great visit and a fantastic 4th.<\/p>\n

(I already told him that there’s no way we’re topping this next year).<\/p>\n

(Not unless someone out there knows how I can get my hands on a bald eagle).<\/p>\n

(And an F-16 fighter jet).<\/p>\n

We got the festivities started with a trip to Fenway on Tuesday night, so that we could shiver in the bleachers, and watch the Red Sox beat up on the Padres. It had been approximately 80 bazillion degrees that week, so we were a little surprised that it got that cold. Allison and Dustin had some t-shirts that they bought earlier that day, so they did some impromptu hernandezing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Wednesday, I had to work, but I hear tell that the gang had a private tasting at the Sam Adams brewery where they got to try some Sam Adams’ Utopia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Omnomnom).<\/p>\n

I got off work early (yay!) and headed downtown for the Pops 4th of July dress rehearsal on the Esplanade. Our Dad prints their t-shirts, so he got us VIP passes. They were on the river side, which didn’t seem that important at first. Oh, how little we knew.<\/p>\n

(More on that later).<\/p>\n

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I joked with Dustin that going to the 4th of July dress rehearsal is a little bit like being “It’s Complicated” with America on Facebook. You know you like them, but you’re just not sure you’re ready for the kind of commitment that it takes to brave the crowds on the day itself.<\/p>\n

And then I said “I am so using that line on my blog.”<\/p>\n

And then I spilled my soda all over the nice man sitting in front of us.<\/p>\n

And then S asked me if that little vignette was making it onto the blog.<\/p>\n

And then I told him that the best part of having your own blog is, you don’t have to tell the embarrassing parts of any of your stories.<\/p>\n

(Crap).<\/p>\n

The concert itself was pretty awesome. We’re not much of a flag-waving family, but we got super into it.<\/p>\n

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Maybe it had something to do with the patriotic sing-a-long?<\/p>\n

Or the fireworks?<\/p>\n

Or the fact that they threw American spirit all over us?<\/p>\n

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Maybe it had something to do with the cannons? Because there were cannons. Right there by the river. Which is the side that we were on. Because, awesome<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Thursday, we went over to my mom’s house for a good ol’ fashioned BBQ.<\/p>\n

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And maybe a beer. Or two.<\/p>\n

And some fun in the sun.<\/p>\n

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Lilian spent Thursday night with her grandparents, and the rest of us piled into canoes to watch the Boston fireworks from the Charles River.<\/p>\n

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\"hopekrick\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which, if not the coolest thing I’ve ever done, is definitely up there. Top twenty, maybe. I mean, I’ve done a lot<\/em> of cool things in my life.<\/p>\n

We packed drinks, and snacks, and had ourselves a picnic on the river. Watching the fireworks usually involves a lot of waiting in the sun, and jostling, and dealing with grumpy people, and views partially obstructed by trees. Watching the fireworks from a canoe? Involves a little bit of paddling, but mostly it was a peaceful evening on the river.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the fireworks were pretty epic. And right there<\/em>. I mean, we could see the charges going up from the bridge and barge where they were setting them off. And, with a wide open river, it was like having our very own private show.<\/p>\n

\"fireworks\"<\/a>
Dustin took this one, because he was smart and brought a real camera with him.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paddling back got a little crowded, and we had to carry our canoe across Mem Drive after they’d already opened it back up to traffic (cue me singing the Benny Hill theme song to the great annoyance of everyone around me). But it was nothing like waiting in traffic for hours and hours like we’ve done in the past.<\/p>\n

Long story short? I want to canoe to the fireworks every year from now on.<\/p>\n

Especially<\/em> if we have a babysitter.<\/p>\n

It was a pretty epic holiday. But I think I’m kinda glad that I have a year to recover before the next one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sister Allison’s brother-in-law (S) was visiting from San Francisco this past week, and we pulled out all the stops to make sure he had a great visit and a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,41,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-holidays","category-photos","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-Yx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3753"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3756,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3753\/revisions\/3756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}