Happy 4th (kinda long... sorry)

We think we kind of have a little tradition-type thingy on Independence Day. For two years in a row now we've hung out with our friend Alisa to celebrate the 4th (and also, for two years in a row now we've had plans in the evening that make it impossible for us to watch 4th of July fireworks with her... so our hanging out tradition is apparently limited to the daylight). So yesterday, the 4th of July, we drove up to Alisa and Alex (her husband)'s place. We basically just hung out and chatted with them and with Leah (who, as you know because you read my last post, was visiting from Chicago) and had a fabulous time. Alisa and Alex have a dog named Asher who's just wonderful. He's fun to play with and he's oh-so cute.

We were having so much fun with our friends that we truly didn't want to leave, but we sorta had to for a really weird reason.

We had tickets to a Major League Soccer game.

Neither Elizabeth nor I know anything about soccer, but a month ago we were given free tickets to a Colorado Rapids soccer game for the 4th of July. The main reason we were going was because we had heard that the fireworks show following the game was one of the best in the state. So, we reluctantly left our wonderful friends and headed home to get ready for our night at the soccer stadium. It was supposed to rain, so we tried to dress for it. Elizabeth did a better job. She wore a coat. I put on a sweatshirt. I figured that it might rain, but it's been 90+ degrees here for over three weeks, so I wasn't terribly worried about the temperature.

We pulled into the stadium parking lot, which isn't a lot so much as a grass and dirt field that appears to stretch for at least 50 miles in every direction (the stadium is seriously in the middle of nowhere). We brought our little umbrella in with us, just in case.

We got to our seats (really good seats!) about 15 minutes into the game. It didn't take us long to realize that watching soccer live at the stadium is about 1000% better than trying to watch it on tv. We had only been there a couple of minutes when the home team scored a goal right in front of our seats. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes.

At halftime Elizabeth and I were chatting, and realizing that we were enjoying the game more than we had anticipated, and then I looked up and saw it. The Big Black Cloud of Certain Death. The cloud that was rolling in (very quickly, by the way) overhead was not dark blue or dark gray. It didn't look like any actual cloud I'd ever seen before. It looked like a cross between the Smoke Monster from Lost and The Nothing from The Never Ending Story. It was big, it was black, and it looked like it was carrying certain death (hence its name).

A few minutes before the game was set to resume that cloud placed itself right over the stadium and blew itself open. It poured on us. We headed up to the concourse, which was roofed, to get ourselves out of the rain a little bit (our cheap little umbrella did what it could, but it couldn't do much). Everyone else at the game had the same idea we did. We watched the first 15 minutes of the second half jam-packed in a huge crowd of people huddled under the only roof at the stadium.

Soon the rain started to die down a little. It kept raining, but it wasn't pouring anymore. At some point when the Big Black Cloud of Certain Death descended on us, the temperature had apparently gone from the 75-80 range to the 35-40 range. It was COLD.

We made it through the rest of the game, but we were very wet. I was soaked to the bone, pretty much. Elizabeth was probably doing a little better, because her coat was better than my sweatshirt, but her jeans were soaked, so it wasn't comfortable at all. After the game ended the announcer reassured everyone that the fireworks would go on as planned despite the rain. They opened up the field to spectators because there are a lot of seats in the stadium where you can't see the fireworks very well. Ours, we were told, were some of them. So we headed down to the field. It was still raining, and our umbrella was still not great at its job, so we figured we could probably find some empty seats high enough that they were under part of the overhang, but where the fireworks could still be seen. We asked one of the stadium workers where the fireworks would be launched from. She told us, and we headed up and found some great seats that weren't being rained on because they were under the stadium's overhang.

We sat there, feeling good about our choice... but then the wind shifted and we were being rained on again. Shortly thereafter the fireworks began, but they weren't being launched from where we were told they would be. So the roof was in our way and we couldn't see. So we got up and headed down to the field so we could see them. The wind was apparently blowing directly from the fireworks to our faces, because there was no possible way to position the umbrella to stop the rain AND for us to see the fireworks. The rain was coming straight out of the fireworks. So we watched most of the show before we realized that we were kind of miserable. We headed out of the stadium and toward the car, keeping an eye on the fireworks show. As we were walking to the car we stopped for the fireworks finale. The smoke was so thick from so many fireworks that you couldn't even see some of the big ones exploding. It was crazy. It would have been an awesome show if we weren't freezing and wet.

Then we remembered that the parking lot, which used to be grass and dirt, was now a swamp of mud. Getting back to our car was an adventure in itself, and trying not to get stuck in the mud as we drove out of the parking lot was another one.

In the end we decided three things:
1. The game would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
2. The fireworks would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
3. We should have blown off the game and hung out with our friends all night long.