We're not giving up. Someday, our family will see a fantastic display of fireworks. But not this year. Taking two infants, a three-year-old who is afraid of air conditioning, and a six-year-old who wakes up at 6 a.m. NO MATTER WHAT to a late-night show of loud noises is not a good idea. And that’s fine. I’d be perfectly content to wait a year or two if we didn’t have such a history of bad luck with fireworks.

The first year after my husband and I married, we tried to watch a July 4 celebration in this area. (I really don’t remember where.) Almost as soon as we left our car, it started to rain. It was a light rain. We decided to go back and sit in the car for a bit to see what would happen. Soon, cars all around us started leaving and we figured it was time to give up as well. We got in the line of bumper to bumper cars and then thought we heard some thunder. Turns out, someone had decided to shoot off all the fireworks before the rain got any worse. It may have been a pretty good show if we weren’t forced to watch it through the rear-view mirrors.

The next year we flew to Portland, OR on July 4. Some friends were getting married that weekend and we were going to meet up with them at a hotel overlooking some great fireworks. Unfortunately, the number we were supposed to call from our hotel turned out to be off by one digit. This was before everyone had cell phones and we had no way of getting in touch with them for directions. Feeling adventurous, we decided to drive around and see if we could luck into some fireworks. We figured we could just follow some locals. This almost worked. We found a parking lot filling up with cars all facing one direction. We assumed these people knew what they were doing and picked one of the last open spaces. We had a nice clear skyline ahead of us except for one big tree. That’s right, you guessed it. Nearly all of the fireworks were behind that one big tree.

The year after that, we didn’t even bother. The year after that, we were parents of a six-week-old and fireworks were way past our bedtime. Then just last year we decided to try again. We had just found out that I was expecting (though we didn’t yet know it was twins) and knew it might be our last chance for a few years. We came up with a great plan. We drove to Wilmington and spent the day at the beach. We thought if we left right after dinner, the kids could nap on the drive home and then it’d be OK to keep them up late for fireworks. Everything worked well right up until we got into position. Instead of fireworks, we began to see lightning flashing in the distance. But no one else was leaving and we were going to be just as stubborn. Then came the rain. Fortunately, we were able to take cover under a bank’s drive-through because it really poured.

Just before the rain let up enough for us to make our way back to the car, we learned that the display had been postponed one night. We debated most of the next day about whether or not we should try again. There were some clouds gathering that evening, but no lightning. I think my husband wanted to give up, but I convinced him at the last minute to scoop the kids out of bed and into the car. We arrived just in time to see everyone else leaving. They had done the fireworks early to avoid the rain.

So this year we settle for sparklers again. Even though sparklers are lame. There, I said it. My husband insisted that if I was going to write about July 4 that I needed to say that sparklers are lame. Now I’ve said it twice. The sad part is that they are still better than any fireworks I’ve seen in the last 10 years. And even though sparklers no longer provide any thrill, watching the kids’ faces as they hold them might just be the best show around.

Mandy appears weekends on TriangleMom2Mom.