A White Trash Quatro de Julio

I love the 4th of July. In our family we have a tradition that we go out to breakfast at Coco's (yes, very fancy) every year. It's always great fun, complete with residual stomachaches. Why was this year different? Well on our way home from fancy Coco's, we saw smoke billowing from the direction of Mesa Riverview. My first thought was that someone torched the McDonald's. So, being the good citizens that we are, we drove over in the gold mormon-mobile to check it out and this is what we found...


Yes, that is a 4th of July car-b-que...complete with a roasted marshmallow-colored minivan. And it was pure coincidence that the cars just happened to be patriotic colors. So, like any white trash family living on the outskirts of the ghetto, we parked the car to watch the fire fighters put out the fire...and to say hello to all our neighbors...who had also come to watch...

In the past, we've had a tradition of packing the entire Coleman family into our cars and watching MCC's fireworks from the Fiesta Mall parking lot. We did something new this year. Instead, we all trouped over to the Coleman Crib, brought all of our kitchen chairs into the front yard and watched the Mesa Country Club's fireworks from the comfort of our own home! After that sadly disappointing display (throughout which my mother and I attempted to sing the entire Stars and Stripes Forever AND 1812 Overture...because it's not the 4th of July without the 1812), We remembered that we had an entire bag of fireworks left over from a trip to Utah...so, like any good Arizona citizen, we set some off in the street. But not the sparklers...because that might have been to dangerous...

So anyway, this is just wishing America a happy belated cumpleano...and may all of your 4th of Julys be white...