Four Score and Seven Years...

Plus a few hundred more.  Happy Independence Day!

I can already smell the hamburgers and hot dogs.  I can see the fireworks.  I can hear my crazy family talking about something that has gotten my mom worked up.  Ha!  Another holiday has come.

I always love the PBS special they have in Washington D.C.  They do such a good job every year.  Last year was fun with the big anniversary of the Muppets.  But in all seriousness, that production is always so patriotic and wonderfully American.

It must've been one hell of a day on July 4, 1776.  Could you imagine our founding fathers, in a sense, signing their lives away with the Declaration of Independence?  It was a total death wish.  But they did it anyway, because freedom, to them, was worth so much that they didn't care if they died fighting for it.  Incredible.

My younger brother is a counselor up at our city's big Boy Scout summer camp.  He's teaching a few Eagle Scout merit badges with one being Citizenship in the Nation.  He came back down the mountain where its held yesterday fit to be tied because only two kids this past week knew what the Declaration of Independence was.  Yes, two.  Benjamin Franklin must be spinning in his grave to know that our children today have next to no knowledge of their nation's history.  It's such a sad, sad thing.  The worst part is, in my opinion, that if one doesn't know history, one is bound to repeat it.  Usually, that never goes well.  So, moms in the blogging world, be sure to teach your children history.  Because, judging from the kids at Scout camp, the schools are not.

My dad minored in History at the University of Arizona "when dinosaurs still roamed the earth" as he likes to put it.  Because my parents home schooled my brother and I, we got to travel...a lot.  And wherever we went, there was always a museum, battlefield, fort, or mansion that we had to see.  Every trip consisted of at least three history lessons.  I used to hate it.  I thought if you've seen one battlefield, you've seen them all.  But, today I am so thankful that my parents gave us those opportunities to learn so much from wherever we went.  I really hope to give the great gift of travel to my children.  You can learn so much visiting another place.  Way more than staying in a public school for a week.

So, I'll get off my soapbox now.  I wish you all a wonderful Independence Day!  Don't get too sunburned.  Don't overeat.  And don't forget the reasons why you live in the land of the free.