Ode to my brother/ 4th of July Festivities

I tried to look up the definition of an ode, and how to write one (high school english was far too long ago to remember) and this is the definition i found: "An ode is...blah blah blah... too hard to write at 8:30 in the morning... blah blah blah."

Taking their advice, this will be a pseudo-ode to my brother / story of my 4th of July festivities

Yesterday, the 4th of July, wasn't promising to be the most exciting 4th I've ever celebrated. All my roommates were either at work or otherwise occupied and I was having some difficulties finding something to do (and someone to do it with). Then, at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon my roommate tausha walked in the door. Long story short she was home from work early (7 hours early in fact). Not long after that I received a phone call from Tyler (my brother) and he was like "hey, so we decided to go to the carnival today and go bowling and have a BBQ and watch fireworks, wanna join us?" Of course tausha and I jumped at the prospect of something to do and agreed to join my brother for the bbq and fireworks. THANKS TYLER!

Now let me explain this bbq. It wasn't just any BBQ... it was delicious! Tyler and his friends Christian and Ky (sp?) got a BUNCH of meat for what they informed me would be a mexican bbq. We had Jarritos and Mango juice for drinks and then... fajita meat (my favorite), some sort of rib action and some chicken wings. All bbq-ed to perfection on our grill. YUM! He also made an excellent home-made salsa to top it all off.

After that we headed to Temple Hill to get ready for watching the firework show that was part of Stadium of Fire. We played some catch, walked around, and waited for time to pass. Now, a little background may be in order here. Growing up my family was never too huge on the 4th of July celebrations. We went to a rodeo once, but generally we just hung out our home and then meandered over to Oak Hills neighborhood for their firework display. Thinking that our normal activities were..well..."normal", I didn't have any thought that the fireworks last night would be anything less that what i was used to. Oh boy, was i wrong. It was really different! Oak Hills happens to put on an amazing show every year. I can't even describe it for people who have never been. It is just at a park in the middle of a neighborhood, but it is definitely a quality show. The fireworks as so close and so loud and there is music and its just a great atmosphere and everything. Now lets compare that with the ones i saw last night. Don't get me wrong, i'm sure they were really good for the people inside the Stadium of Fire. But from our view point they were too far away to impress me. Not loud and not engaging at all. We talked through most of them. They weren't horrible, and it was a fun night, but I missed Oak Hills.

After the show was over, we headed back to our car only to get stuck in traffic for the next hour! Now, if you know anything about provo you know that the apartments south of campus (where we live) are NOT far from the provo temple. But there was SO much traffic. Without going into the details lets just say that my brother isn't the most patient person in the world. Lets just say, we may or may not have been pulled over by a fireman.

It was lots of fun overall though, and I'm really grateful that my brother invited tausha and I to go with him and his friends. The fourth of July turned out to be fun after all!


I failed to take any pictures yesterday, but here is a pic from last year's 4th of July (at Oak Hills of course!)