The fourth....

Happy 4th of July!

Thinking of this day takes me back to my childhood. You know....when you could actually buy fireworks and fire them off yourself.

It saddens me how much things have changed over the years. It seems to me that more and more privileges are taken away over the years. Our kids experiences are becoming less and less as our sense of paranoia increases.

Yesterday, when I was talking to the AAA guy about fireworks, he said they still sell them in a fairly nearby city. I found it interesting that my first thought was "oooohhh...contra ban"...like it was something evil.

When my parents raised us, I remember them telling me stories about, "When I was a kid......" then blah blah blah, because I usually tuned them out.

But now, I am fairly certain that they were saying how much more freedom they had as children, and how things were better in many ways.

With each generation, more decisions are taken away from us, as if we don't have the ability to make decisions for ourselves.

We are held responsible for our children, but are not always given the freedom to raise them as we might, without consequence, or worse yet; judgement. It is a very frustrating place to be.

So how do we give our children the same experiences we had? Though seeing fireworks over the lake is very exciting, it is not the same handheld experience we had back in the day.

Any though it isn't a right to have those experiences, it is a more rich experience (in my humble opinion), and one I would like my kids to have, at least once.

So though I may sound a bit bitter on this independence day...I am not. I am thankful for all my experiences, fireworks included, and I may take a ride to a nearby city to venture in to the contra ban. I will not give you my location, because I am not that stupid. But know that I will have a smile on my face while I watch my children in awe while holding a (dare I say it?) sparkler.