Fourth of July

At the request of my friend Terri, I just got back from spending the Fourth with her and her family in Lubbock. Of course, most of you are probably wondering why anyone would want to spend the Fourth in Lubbock. Surprisingly, when I was there a couple of years ago, they had the best fireworks show I'd ever seen (and I've seen quite a few), so I had no problem with going again. I had planned on coming into town on Thurdsay, but a couple of Terri's daughters played the guilt card until I relented and drove in Wednesday (the 3rd) after work, so I was also in town for the parade Thursday morning. Terri's husband Tim was trying out his new digital camera and took lots of pictures, and I put a small subset of them on the website at:

http://donyoung.us/id2002/

Here's a couple of notes about Lubbock parades:

1. You pretty much just have to sign up in order to be in the parade. You don't really have to have an extravagant float. Heck, you don't even have to have ANY kind of float.
2. In Lubbock parades, you're going to see a lot of horses. And due to the potential messes that might occur, they have several street sweepers spaced throughout the parade. And they're smart enough not to put a marching band right after a set of horses, unlike some of the parades I was in growing up.

Of course, I do have one story to tell. On one of the evenings, Terri's friend Corrie was over with her 3 kids, so we played a game of Pictionary, kids included. Tim, Corrie's two sons, and I were on one of the teams. Courtland (the 6 year old) wanted a turn at drawing, but we were a little concerned that he wouldn't know the definitions of the clues. Well, in the course of trying to explain that to him, Tim accidentally upset Courtland and made him cry. Yes, Tim did eventually smooth things over with him, but not until after the game was over and we had suffered a humiliating defeat to a team of girls. We never could get Courtland off of the couch where he was pouting and rejoin the game.

I know, it doesn't seem like an upbeat story, but I have a couple of reasons for telling it: 1) it's nice for me to be able to tell a story about an adult making a kid cry in which I'm not the adult in question, and 2) Courtland provided my favorite sound bite from the weekend while he was on the couch. His mother was trying to convince him to play some more, and she mentioned that he seemed to be having fun earlier, so why not give it one more shot. Courtland replied that he was having fun, until "TIM RUINED IT ALL!" Again, I'm glad it wasn't me messing up this time.