Happy 4th of July!

What do Houstonians do for the 4th? 100,000 gather together for country music, nascar, big trucks, and huge fireworks...everything is bigger in Te-has right? One of our friends works for the City of Houston and got tickets to Houston's big 4th of July bash downtown. I have been wanting to go for a few years and this was the year.

We drove down to reliant stadium and took the light rail into downtown. It was about a mile walk to the festival. They closed down Allen parkway, which is a divided highway that winds under the interstate. They had a free carnival for the kids with lots of rides and two bandstands. Chevy had a huge display (in Texas it's pronounced dis-play) with their new hybrid Tahoe that gets a whopping 21 mpg. Chevy is going to get their seat kicked if they don't get in the game. They even had a hunting photo shoot and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to dress our sweet little girls in orange and give them big guns.

Sarah Evans, Jo Dee Messina and Miranda Lambert all performed. They sounded awesome, at least what we could hear of them. We chose to sit next to the "local" bandstand and had to listen to some Jimmy buffett knock-off local band for an hour. We would of moved but we sent the men for snow cones and were wondering if they were going to return. We figured they 1. got arrested, 2. one was a closet country junkie who decided to come out or 3. joined the Hare Krishnas that were dancing and drumming in the street. We watched them chant for a while, we got to laughing about their crocs. Imagine a bunch of drumming men with bald heads and their traditional robes with bright orange crocs.

Houston has the largest fireworks display in the nation and it was AWESOME! They shot them off from two hill sides and it was all orchestrated to music. Although we had to sit next to the sucky band for an hour, we had perfect seats for the fireworks. Erin and her friend Elle just sat there clapping and laughing, they had such a good time.
We shuffled out with the other 99,996 people and walked downtown Houston at midnight, probably one of the few nights of the year that its safe to walk after dark. They had their equestrian police force out and Erin thought the cops on horses were very cool. About 20,000 of those people took the light rail and we made it back to the car without being mugged.