This year was a special 4th of July, it was the 250th, fourth of July for the United States! There was a lot of cool celebrations. The FIFA World Cup was also hosted by the United States this year and that was fun to watch. None of us are really big soccer fans but since it was in the United States it was everywhere and lots of news and social media about it. I thought is was cool to see the other countries from all over the world coming and posting their impressions of the United States. They were amazed by the sheer size of Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Buccee’s and the quantity of food and options available in them. Unlimited “free” refills on drinks. Air conditioning being available everywhere. Kansas City hosted several games. There are some pictures from the Norway game here that show the roads/sidewalks leading to the stadium being completely full of people in orange for the few hours before and after the game. Argentina played here so we got to have the world famous Messi play in Kansas City. Brazil played here too, so Matthew watched a game from Brazil of his home. He was allowed to watch any of the Brazil games with families watching the games there.
We usually host the fourth at our house and have a BBQ and light fireworks off. This year Allison was in Utah doing a therapy program, and Matthew was in Brazil so I wanted to change it up a little bit and not do our usual thing. Emilee went to a For Strength of Youth (FSY) with a friend the week of the fourth. It was in Columbia Missouri at Mizzou. So I dropped her off at that. A few days later Ryan and I went down to the Lake of the Ozarks and spent a few days with some friends/work colleagues. One of them has a nice boat so we got to ride around the lake one of the days. We stayed at a resort called Margaritaville. On the morning of the fourth we drove to Columbia to pick Emilee up at 7am and then came back to our resort. It was a fun place, they had pools, bowling, restaurants, arcades, shopping, mini golf, lots of fun things to do. And there was supposed to be a lot of cool fireworks that night. We had a late breakfast and then checked out the shops and got ice cream and ended up in the arcade for a while. It was really hot and sunny. After we had been in the arcade for a while the power went off. We made our way to the window and there was a random crazy rain storm that was blowing through. It was like a mini hurricane on the lake. It lasted about an hour but it ripped docks out of their anchor, roofs off building, and knocked down trees that left 40,000 people out of power, including our resort. We walked around a little and there wasn’t much that worked without power- except mini golf. We decided to wait a bit and go to dinner and see if the power would come back on. We found a pizza place far enough away that was still open. After dinner the news was saying it would probably be a few days before most people got power back. We decided instead of staying in a room with no air conditioning, lights, or warm water we would head home and catch the end of the firework shows in our own neighborhood and sleep in our beds that night.
We made it home a little before 10pm and there were still lots of fireworks going off for us to have a good show. Our 4th didn’t turn out the way we thought it would but that seems to be the theme for 2026 so we made the most of it. Maybe next year more of us will be together. Matthew called and we realized that after the fourth he has one more of each holiday until he is home. So next 4th will be the last holiday he misses before he comes home!!
