He did what???: July 4, 2008--

Since this is probably our last 4th in DC, and we had Brad's parents visiting, we decided to head to the National Mall to watch the fireworks.

The venture there was just a hint as to what we were in store for. While riding the elevator at the mall to the bottom floor which led us to the metro I nearly strangled the teenage girl next to me. My biggest pet peeve is people that don't need to take the elevator when there are strollers. This teenager next to me was leaning up against the wall, hanging out. Meanwhile there were several strollers that wanted to board the elevator. Did she move to make room? Of course not. The world revolves around her.

So we get to the L'Enfant Station and go up the elevator to ground level. The doors open and what do I see. My second pet peeve. A giant group of people standing right in front of the doors. Okay, so it was raining and they were trying to shelter themselves, but it was still irritating. I pushed my way through the people and put Talan's rain shield on and off we went to the national mall. I'm not scared of a few raindrops.

I was very happy to see that the lemonade stand was still up from the Folk Life Festival. Karen, (brads mom), and I had lemonade as we walked around the festival the day before while the boys were at the Tiger Woods tournament. It was the best lemonade I've ever had. All freshly squeezed. Sadly, on the 4th, my lemonade was super tart. Still good though, just not the same.

After the lemonade we were ready to stake out a spot. Soon after the fireworks started. I'm not a huge fireworks fan. I can watch the first few and then it turns into just a bunch of noise. It was pretty though. Ashton loved them and Talan didn't really care. He was happy drinking my lemonade and climbing on his brother.

About 20 minutes later the show was over and there was mass chaos as people walked as fast as they could trying to beat all the other people to the train first. We took our time. Turns out maybe we should have ran too. The next half hour of my night was spent sandwiched outside the L'Enfant station, in the rain, trying to figure out why no one was moving. I still havn't figured it out. Karen had Talan, Tony had Ashton's hand and I had the stroller folded up and on my back. I figured it would be easier to make it to the escalators since people just step over the stroller. Turns out people dont care if a girl is carrying a 50 pound stroller. They will push you just the same. That's okay, I push back. Poor Ashton was getting pushed around too. About this time we all wondered if the 20 minutes of...in my words "lame"...fireworks were worth our current conditions. Right then the answer was a big fat NO. Finally I met a nice man who stretched his arms out and yelled at everyone to wait so I could get through. Thank you nice man!

Once down in the station we waited with the millions of other people for the next train. I was impressed at Tony who shoved everyone out of the way to board. Karen and I could barely keep up. Good job Tony.

Ashton was sad that I didn't bring him back a snowcone even though he told me if I couldn't find a snowcone I could bring him a lemonade. Grandpa Tony took him to get a popsicle and everything was good.