here's an interesting finding: if you put your kids who don't nap down for a nap (presuming of course that your eldest just went through a grueling week of soccer camp and is exhausted enough to sleep), promising fireworks if they go to sleep for an hour or so, and they follow through and sleep for an hour (ava) and 2 hours (carter), they will STILL want to go to bed at their regular bedtime, and will be sleepy and cranky until they get to go to bed.

but, in the morning, they will remember the fireworks (the loud scary fireworks) as something magical.

the parade was cute, the sinfonietta on the lawn was fun, the late night guide boat ride to the playground was exciting (playground not so much--there must have been hundreds of kids on the playscape--recipe for disaster), and then the fireworks, which were well done.

ava is trying to rescue a stranded baby raccoon (adolescent, really), who has been stuck in a tree for 4 days now. presumably it got scared and ran up there. she has organized a phone campaign, rallying relatives far and wide. on her behalf (and the raccoon's) i called the police, who were well aware of it, and i was told that the DEC (dept of environmental conservation) had been notified and would take care of it on monday. while the poor thing dies of dehydration -- or rabies, even more horriffic. you would think that there is one officer on duty with access to a tranquilizer gun who could make the effort to come get a suffering animal out of a tree. obviously, no one wants to handle it, but it really needs to be taken care of. it has proven to be very distressing to ava, but at least she has been pacified just by knowing that someone eventually is going to help it.

at least she did not think of calling the police herself. which she would have done, had it crossed her mind. at the park, she was ready to grab a passing crowd control officer and MAKE him get that raccoon down. which i almost let her do, but refrained as it was he 4th of july and he was a little bit busy.