As I mentioned in my outfit post that went up earlier this morning (which you can read HERE) I'm going to be sharing a quick recap of the 4th of July with you!
The 4th of July is a pretty big deal in my town & is honestly one of my favorite days of the summer because there's such a strong sense of community this day of the year. There's two main events that take place on this day: the parade in the morning and the fireworks at night.
The parade begins at 9am and stretches down one of the main streets here in my hometown. It's so cool because you can always tell you're on the parade route because there's red, white & blue stars painted in the street all year round. People put chairs out on the parade route a week in advance but luckily, my friend Lauren's dad lives on the parade route so I always just park at the shopping center nearby and walk over there and watch the parade. As I get older, the parade becomes more of a social event for me, seeing classmates & friends that I haven't seen in a while. Usually, most kids would still be sleeping but it's fun to see everyone up and out and about for the parade each year.
The parade usually lasts for around 2ish hours give or take and then everyone goes on their ways to various cookouts and parties around town. After the parade ended I headed back home where I honestly didn't do anything exciting except catch up on my YouTube subscriptions and my Bloglovin' feed.
Later in the afternoon, around 4pm, my family went over to my grandparents house for dinner & dessert and my dad and I also shot photos of my outfit which I shared on the blog this morning (which you can read HERE).
After dinner & dessert we headed home and I quickly changed into a more casual & comfy outfit before heading over to Lauren's house to meet up with my friends again. We made s'mores in Lauren's backyard since she has a firepit & we also did sparklers and some fun little fireworks out in the street. Lauren's family also has a golf cart so we drove around the neighborhood for around an hour while playing music.
Golf carts have kind of become an expectation in my town on the 4th of July, lots of families, especially who live down by the parade route rent them for the day and the members of the Civic Association also rent them to ride around in the parade with them. It's really only acceptable to drive around in a golf cart without getting weird stares on the 4th of July so we took full advantage of that.
Once we got back to Lauren's we all piled in cars & headed over to the park to get ready for the fireworks. The fireworks typically start around 10pm and since our old high school is right by the park where they set them off, we just park in one of the parking lots & walk over to the park. It's nice having those parking lots there because we were able to leave Lauren's around 9pm to head over.
Once we got to the park, we spread out some blankets, took some pictures together and then waited for the fireworks to start. This year the fireworks lasted about 25 minutes and afterwards we had to deal with basically the entire population of my town trying to get back to their cars all at the same time.
Right before we got back to my car, my younger brother Ryan texted me and told me to wait because he needed a ride home so we waited for him for a bit before he finally showed up and then we had to deal with all the traffic on the roads. I only had Lauren & Rachel in my car on the way to and from the fireworks which was nice because I only had to go back to Lauren's and drop them both off since Rachel's car was already at Lauren's.
Once I dropped them off & Ryan and I got home I downloaded all the photos that my dad had taken of my outfit off the camera before heading up to bed.
How was your 4th of July?
xoxo,
