Safe and easy way to light sparklers and 4th of July fun

Hello, I hope your all having a great day after the 4th!  We had a wonderful day yesterday of swimming,water balloons, and bear sightings in our yard!!! Wait, what?!!!  Yes, my son was out grilling some burgers and along came this big black bear up our driveway, smelling that food.

Kind of exciting, kind of scary:)  It was the first one we had seen in our immediate yard.  The girls had filled 300 water balloons for the kids to enjoy.  They had fun throwing those and playing games.  Then we had a nice BBQ dinner and at night time we headed down to the local hangout for some  firework fun.

We got to meet up with others in our community and enjoy some fellowship and memory making moments with our children.  First we started out with making some smores.

I brought a tray filled with graham crackers, marshmallows, and different chocolate candy bars.  The children used wooden skewers and cooked their marshmallows over a chafing fuel tank.  (Think what they put under the trays of food to keep them warm at receptions, etc)

I placed it into a large tin can to keep fingers safe from burning.This worked out great, no burned fingers and much safer then other methods.   I got a whole case of these at SAMS club for around $10.  We will be using them for many years to come. Then, I don’t know about you, but we have lots of little ones to light sparklers for.  Most years, my husband and sons fingers would grow tired of holding the lighter to light the hundreds of sparklers we go through.  Then we got smart one year and used a large pillar candle. That worked okay, but the children would keep touching the wick and make it go out.  Then this year we got smarter:) and decided to use our chafing fuel tanks…..BINGO!  Perfection!!!

All we needed was someone to hand out the sparklers to the children. I pre-opened all the packages before we went, to cut down on the amount of trash.  Then I had another tin can for all of the burned sparklers for the children to place them in.  This worked the best.  Next year, we will probably take a 5 gallon bucket filled with water, as we go through many sparklers, but the tin can worked quite well for this method.

The children had a great time with their sparklers. This was our first year of not really worrying that anyone was going to get burned.  Here is Stephen enjoying his sparkler.  Here is Jentzen enjoying his.

Then it was time for the fireworks. Of course, this was the moment that I had put my phone away?!!!  Our friends brought a huge package of glo sticks so the children enjoyed making large necklaces and fun toys with them.  That was probably their favorite thing of the night.  I was like, “Oh look at the fireworks display.”  They were more into building their glo-light worm:)

It was a fun night of community and memory making.  There were a lot of fireworks, a lot of laughter, and a lot of fun.  My boys got to ride in a dune buggy as well.  A good night for family.

Now today is a new day, back to chores and normal life.  We are hoping for some sunshine and swimming time at the lake. 🙂  Hope you have a wonderful day as well.  Be blessed!