We spent the Fourth of July weekend in Springfield, Mo., with my parents and my Grandma Carol (who was visiting for a few weeks). What a fun time. I’ll post some more about the visit later, but for now, I’ll share some details about our holiday outing. My parents’ house is just south of town, so we headed out a couple miles to nearby Battlefield, Mo., to watch fireworks.

My mom insisted we get there early, and early it was. I think we had just over two hours to kill before the show started. Oliver spent most of it running, with his head down, back and forth across the sidewalk, through the playground area and in/out of the crowd. It was really tiring chasing him everywhere, and he was extremely stubborn about being redirected back to our spot on the lawn. However, just before the fireworks he was pretty tired, as seen here in this photo taken shortly after we gave him a bottle as he watched the band play:



The fireworks were actually pretty impressive, though the show was a bit short. Honestly, it was one of the better firework displays I’ve seen in my 33 years. While watching, I had my camera and tripod set up to try and capture a few images. Here’s one of the few firework pictures that worked:



After a while, I turned the camera over toward Sarah and Oliver to capture the picture below. It was actually almost pitch black by that point, so I had the camera set to capture as much light as possible. This shot also was aided by the light of the fireworks. Here’s the pic:



Overall, Oliver really seemed to enjoy the fireworks. He sat and stared at them calmly, though it was about two hours past his bedtime. By the end, he had turned around and put his head down on Sarah’s shoulder, but he kept twisting his head around and opening one tired eye to catch a glimpse. It was pretty cute. Next year should be even more exciting, since he’ll be talking and all that fun stuff.

Anyway, to wrap up this post, below is a YouTube video I shot and cleaned up (mostly reducing the darkness). You can tell my mom was enjoying herself, from her enthusiastic, booming voice! Oliver was just calm as could be. Enjoy: