if any place does the fourth right, it's boston.

fourth of july festivities included but were not limited to: 

a tall ships sailing cruise with my best vecna (work) friends

 (and a real pirate apparently! look at that skull shirt with plaid shorts long-haired fellow)

pirates!

girl who stole my big girl outfit and china town gems
(and not pictured : eating at chinese dumpling house and getting to expose my friends to some of the things i loved in taiwan)

millions and billions of sailors

and other military friends 

feeling like i took a picture in 1912 rather than 2012

staring at children play while we stood in line to get into boston pops for two hours. 

also, not pictured would be the security man who tried to not let me get in because i followed the old couple in front of us and they went in the wrong direction. i feel like there is no hope security guy believed they were really in line and they probably didn't get in, which is so sad! to this day we are still in a fight with said guy. 

enjoying boston pops with some lady friends

and our main lady friend jennifer hudson! 

i don't think any of us really expected her to be there (because this actually happened the night before during the performance they taped to show the next day on cbs) but she was! she sang so many good dream girls songs and i sang and danced and jumped up and down so hard for her. 

other exciting moments included the america sing-a-long and screaming the words to "sweet caroline" with the thousands of other people there. oh! and really just every second of their performance.

 it. was. AWESOME.

good fireworks, cannon ball explosion sounds, and confetti. 

then a lovely 4 mile walk home because we didn't want to get stuck on the subway for hours. 

we regretted this decision the next day when we realized none of us had worn good walking shoes. 

okay now that was all the fourth of july eve but this is the real thing!

we were all so tired and forgot to wake up until like 10:30 and then forgot to leave the house until like 2pm. whoops! in hindsight - i feel very glad for that because the fourth was HOT. what i don't feel glad about is making everyone climb bunker hill with me so we could get a bird's eye view of all the ships in the harbor. it was a good idea but not super smart. bunker hill is definitely a winter/cold weather activity for sure haha. 

we went back to check out some of the tall ships/colonial friends
(please notice the handle of my umbrella sticking out of my purse - we will talk about this later)

and got some organic lemonade for $1! but really we got two for $1 because that dad was so done being outside and said to me the following, "please. just take it. no, i'm serious. it's free. take it" haha. i loved it - but not the lemonade. i think he gave it away because it was watered down and gross. sadly, the child didn't realize what was going on and was like "hey wait! she didn't give me a dollar!" and ended with the dad grabbing him and being like "i know, i told her to take it. it wasn't worth a dollar so stop crying we're going inside" haha. shoot. 

the next few pictures were taken by my lovely roommate maren - she is quite the photographer and her pictures with her real cam turned out so much nicer than my phone pictures and are nicer to look at so i hope she doesn't mind that i use those instead!

we took the subway over to a different part of the harbor to check out a few more tall ships. boston has only had the tall ships come to town twice in the last ten years so it was pretty lucky we got to see them! 

they were really great and i love that they really do use them, who knew disney type ships are still real!?  

 i regretted wearing a sleeveless shirt with a cardigan because i could never take it off and it was absolute heat stroke torture. also, this is jamie. she is way funny and kept me entertained all day with her random comments like "you know. when i get married i have to marry someone who is willing to have our honeymoon in one of those tree houses because then you can feel awesome about never leaving your room" haha just catching me off guard left and right.   

not pictured : a great bbq with ward friends that we are all grateful happened because it helped our heat headaches and tired bodies be able to handle the next few hours of fourth festivities. remembering to eat food is always a good idea that i never have in those dying of heat times. 

after friend bbq we (and every one else in boston) walked over to the longfellow bridge to watch the fireworks. 

we sat on this ledge for a good two hours and waited for the fireworks to begin. it was kind of stormy and lightning kept happening through the clouds which was fun to look at. 

and even though two hours is a long time to sit i thoroughly enjoyed the lightning, city skyline, lit up boats and kayaks on the charles, listening to the boston pops perform in the distance, and the orange-ish full moon. also, since the weather got everyone a little nervous boston pops stopped playing for awhile and i felt SO happy we got to see them the night before and so sad for all the people who camped out all day to see them on the fourth. luckily they got to play about half of their program but us night before people definitely got the better show.

when the show started we realized we were facing the wrong skyline (the down town one instead of the back bay one) so we ran up the stairs to try and get a semi-okay view of the fireworks. right as the fireworks started going off there was a torrential downpour and people just freaked out and ran away because it was coming down so so hard. me, being my mother's daughter, saw that rain was in the forecast and carried around an umbrella the entire day so i just popped that umbrella up and we moved right to the front and had a perfect view of the fireworks. it lived up to the hype 100% and i recommend anyone and everyone to see the boston pops and firework show in boston if the opportunity ever presents itself. i mean there were so many fireworks going off that there was a ginormous smoke cloud surrounding them! i don't really know what could be much more awesome than that. also, how lucky are those people on the subway? their driver just stopped right in front of the fireworks so they could watch them!

and to make a perfect and out of control night even more perfect and out of control as we were walking back to the subway in a herd of people (the streets were PACKED) i spotted a local restaurant having an outdoor Motown dance party. we had no idea why it was happening but we definitely joined that thing for a good thirty minutes. 

and then to end a great night we all got shoved into the subway with everyone's soaked from rain and sweaty from humid heat bodies and all bonded over how uncomfortably close we all were to each other. 

i will admit - i missed my family terribly but had a nice time anyway and all in all - it was just a real good independence day and i love america and any opportunity i get to wear red, white, and blue because i love looking like america too. the end.