Fireworks and Eighties Music Oh My!

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I'm not one to love crowds. In fact, I try to avoid them at all costs. Realizing that I live in a smaller sized city, I don't come in contact with crowds all too often. My husbands laughs when I cringe driving in "rush hour" traffic and wonder where "all these cars are coming from?"

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Call it crazy then that my little family went to a huge outdoor concert and Fourth of July celebration that drew 80,000 people. Yes you read the number right. That's huge (at least around here)! Tons o People! Everywhere!

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My brother and sister-in-law take their family every year to this celebration and we normally sit at home and laugh at the craziness. This year, when my husband heard the name of the bands at the event, he decided we should give it a shot. My sister-in-law even got up at the crack of dawn and set out our blanket at 5:00 a.m. so we've have a great spot. (thanks !)

It was a perfect night. Not too hot, not too buggy and the our "spot" was perfect. It was in the shade, on the edge by the kiddie park, and close enough to be part of the action. We had found a perfect place to park not too far away and had a great exit strategy in place after the fireworks.

The kids loved hanging out with cousins, friends and, of course, Miss A and I found our way to the playground and Porto-potties numerous times.

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Now I will admit I don't listen to classic 80's music anymore. In fact, I'm not sure I listened much in the 80's either. What I was doing back then I'm not sure, but it might have involved soccer, school, reading, babysitting and watching 16 Candles and Mr. Mom hundreds of times. Music just wasn't that important to me. So when Kansas, Styx and Foreigner played I probably knew all of 4 songs. Some sounded slightly familiar, but not enough to sing along to.

Proving that Mr. C is his mother's son, he was ready to boot out soon after dinner and few songs. There were too many people. Miss M and Miss M, however, were busy playing with a baby, laughing, hitting beach balls, and drinking Gatorade.
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We decided that we should probably sneak out a little early to avoid the rush so we gathered our stuff and walked through no less than 10,000 people's blankets and a Porto-potty line 500 deep to our car. We then watched the fantastic fireworks show across the street from the park and were in our car and home about 1/2 hour after the grand finale.

Perfect. Only sad part is that my husband's favorite band was the closer and their best songs were in the last 1/2 hour that we missed walking back to the car. Honey, thanks for putting up with my fear of crowds. I promise we can buy the songs on Itunes and you can listen to them whenever you want.