A happy 4th
My father in law throws his big party of the year on the 4th of July. It makes sense -- he and my mother in law live on the water and share a huge house with my sister in law and her family, so there's plenty of room to gather. And the water view gives us an excellent venue for fireworks later in the evening.
This year was no exception -- we got there around 2PM, when the party was in full swing, and left around 9:30 or so, after some of the relatives fired off an impressive barrage of fireworks.
This was the first year I can remember where the kids really didn't need much supervision, with a couple of exceptions (mainly involving a fire pit and one unfortunate altercation that involved a foot to the face). It was a nice change of pace, especially since I got to contrast it with my wife's cousins and brother, both of whom have younger kids, get run ragged as they chased their pre-schoolers around.
The only tough thing was that the kids were pretty exhausted by the time we got home -- James was in tears he was so tired, so it was a bit of an effort to put everyone to bed.