Fourth of July in Boston

So one of the reasons I've been a little slow with postings on the blog lately is because I've been wanting to get our 4th of July pictures up before it was, say, the 4th of August. :) I didn't want to have too many entries before I figured out how to post videos, and finally today I sat down and figured it out.

By the way, props to Google for making it uber-easy. (Does anyone say "props" anymore?) Nathan was like, "Wow, you're a whiz!" And I said, "Actually, Google just makes it really easy." Plus, he helped me. And he said, "Yeah, you're right. Nevermind." :)

Anyhow, I thought you might like to see some of our pictures and videos. We've never been in Boston for the 4th of July before--we've always traveled home to Texas--but I have always wanted to be here and experience it at least once. What you do is you go down to the Charles River and camp out during the afternoon, and later the Boston Pops play in the Hatch Shell (an outdoor theater on the Boston side of the river), and the music is piped all along the banks of the river. Then, after the concert is over, they do a huge fireworks show (supposedly the best in the nation). The whole thing is televised nationally. A lot of our friends go down and spend their 4th of July this way every year, so we decided we'd do it, too.

However, the weather turned freakishly chilly and rainy. So we stuck it out for a while in our t-shirts and shorts, but then some MIT alums told us about a particular building we could go into that overlooked the river. We were really glad they knew where to go! It turned out to be perfect (except that we couldn't really hear the music, which I was a little sad about, but I would rather have been warm and dry than out there listening to the Pops while wet and cold). So we sat in the lobby of the 2nd story of a building and played games and ate for a few hours, until it was time for the fireworks.

The fireworks were pretty cool. I've posted some short videos of them for you to take a look at. I was able to get some fun stuff, like comets, smiley faces, and the finale. All the fireworks are shot off from a barge in the middle of the river, and you could feel all the shockwaves in your chest. When the finale came, I was thinking, "Boy, this is borderline painful!" It was really powerful! Anyway, we had fun. Enjoy!