Weekend in Hiawassee, Plus: Reflections on July 4th, 2008   Tuesday July 6 2010

This weekend, Mike and I took a trip up to Hiawassee to spend a few days together before I head out of town for two weeks without him. (My parents and brother and I are going on a road trip through some of the national parks out west, starting tomorrow!) An additional purpose for the trip was to go to a little Fourth of July reunion of my Van Nus relatives (my Mema’s family– my paternal grandmother’s side of the family), organized by my cousin Katie and her husband, Eddie.

The party was held in Katie and Eddie’s front yard, possibly the greatest front yard in the history of yards.

We all grilled up some good food and hung out together, and Mike was not scared off by yet another day of hanging out with my relatives.

And we played Washers! Here is our dazzling hostess, Katie, taking her turn, and to her left is the only one of us who exhibited any real skill at the game, Donna, who got the only two ringers of the whole day.

The party wound down later in the afternoon and just a few of us remained to sit around in the sunset and grill some more food for dinner.

I have the best family EVER. And this is only one part of it!

At one point during the day, I told the story of the fateful Fourth of July of 2008, where my father and my Uncle Jeff almost killed me. It is a pretty good story, so I shall retell it here, with visual aids!

We are, I would say, a bigger than average fireworks family. 2010 has been a rare exception for me. What happened two years ago was, Dad and Jeff  had developed the genius plan of duct taping fireworks to a frisbee, lighting the fuse, and then throwing the frisbee.

This turned out to be pretty cool, as it made what would ordinarily just have been a vertical explosion into a much faster-moving vertical AND horizontal explosion. They did this many times, changing their taping and positioning strategy each time to achieve maximum impressiveness.

Dad and Jeff were already in Big Trouble with my mother, because they allowed my cousin’s boyfriend Logan, who possibly had never thrown a frisbee before in his life, to throw one of these dangerous projectiles, and it sailed directly under my grandfather (Dzia-Dzia)’s lawn chair and exploded. Dzia-Dzia at the time was recovering from cancer and major surgery and was not able to dash away shrieking from the explosion beneath him, which is what any other person would have done. So, my mother was slightly displeased, shall we say, and there had already been some yelling, as I recall, but somehow, the antics were allowed to continue.

Now, with the exception of the fateful Dzia-Dzia Chair incident, all of these frisbee-rigged fireworks had taken a quite similar trajectory down the length of our street and exploded harmlessly somewhere near the end of our driveway. I had been taking plenty of photos and videos all evening, which is why my father–my own father!–suggested that I go stand way down at the end of the road so that I could get a video of the frisbee fireworks coming towards me.

I was skeptical, but they assured me– “No, go stand WAY at the end of the road. There is no way it’s going to go that far, have any of the OTHER ones gone that far?” I admitted that they had not, and proceeded to the end of the road.

You can probably see where this is going; luckily, I did capture the whole experience on camera.

Nothing quite says fatherly love and patriotism quite like hurling explosives at your own child and then having a good laugh about it!

Anyway, a good time was had by all this weekend, and I have spent today relaxing in the comfort of my own home, which I will shortly be leaving–to go on our long-awaited national parks trip! I will be bringing my computer along to update you all on the events as they unfold, so check back here throughout the next two weeks for updates, and if you would like a postcard, send me your address and I’ll send you one!