The Strangest Kind of Fourth

I've spent the last several blog days saying goodbye to all the rooms in our Kokomo house, and now I'm behind on talking about everything else! So let's start catching up, shall we?

I know this was so two (plus) weeks ago, but let's talk about the 4th of July! This year's fourth officially goes down as our strangest ever.

As you may know, if you've read here for a few years, I love the Fourth of July. I love the picnics and the fireworks and the fact that you don't have to wear a coat for the holiday. :) Ryan and I have had a tradition throughout our marriage of going to watch fireworks over a lake, and we had every intention of doing that this year too!

And then viruses.

And then packing to move.

And then garage sales.

And then our 4th looked nothing like tradition.

The day was properly hot and humid - and we spent the morning winding down the last of the Shafferland 2.0 garage sale fun. I already told you about the sale, but I just want to say again how grateful we are for how well it went. We were able to sell almost everything we had out there, and the little bit we had left, we took to our church for its rummage sale the following weekend.

We knew that the appraiser was planning to come to our house the following day (yes, you read that right: the Sunday of a holiday weekend), so we spent the rest of the 4th working hard on the house to get it ready to be seen. Apparently appraisals are very different now than they were in the past when we've sold homes. We were sternly admonished to have the place in pristine condition - clear down to the length of the grass - before he arrived. So we worked hard!

Maybe another day, I'll tell you some of the absolute nightmare the appraisal process was for us, but it's still much too soon to talk about it now. Suffice it to say we wanted to do everything we could to give our part of the process the best effort possible.

We were pretty tired from two days of hot and humid garage sale life, plus all the cleaning and straightening for the appraiser, so we decided to stay home that evening.

Though we weren't incredibly fearful of being in a fireworks crowd, we also knew we were very close to starting our new job, and we wanted to do everything we could to take extra precautions to stay virus-safe, especially since Indiana's numbers have been climbing over the last few weeks.

It was also just so hot - even into the evening - and it didn't sound fun to sit outside for any reason.

So we stayed home and watched fireworks on TV while about a thousand live shows exploded outside within earshot. I have no idea if there are normally that many fireworks in Kokomo or if it was just a virus-year kind of special, but there were a lot of them.

We were hot, sweaty, gross - and happy to be home together, even if it was a strange 4th.

I won't lie: I sure am hopeful that next summer we can go to proper fireworks outside - maybe over a lake? - on the 4th. I didn't mind a break in tradition for these obvious good reasons, but I missed my beloved 4th celebration in all its normalcy.

(By the way - what did you all do on the 4th? Stay home? Go out? Catch a neighborhood show? I have no judgment for your choice - whatever it was! I am just curious what people did!)