While I’ve been looking for my outlook to change back to an adventurous one, my family and I had an adventure without realizing it 🙂

On September 2nd, we decided to brave the crowd and venture into downtown Knoxville for the annual Boomsday event. This was the 25th anniversary of the huge 30 minute long firework display put on by the city of Knoxville. The developers of this event expected about 400,000 people to attend the largest firework display in the nation. If I had to guess, I’d say that over 400,000 people were there despite the bad weather forecast!

We started off the day in Market Square, grabbing sub sandwiches from Subway. Bellies full, we went to the middle of the square where a street performer was makes balloon animals. Our teenage kids (16, 15, 15, and 14yrs old) participated in a band session with this guy. He played a flute while the kids drummed on his instruments. Several passer-bys stopped to watch such local entertainment. 🙂 They drew a pretty good sized crowd too 🙂

Next, My oldest son’s girlfriend stood by as the nice man made 2 balloon animals for her. Receiving her balloons, she said, “Even though I said I wasn’t going to have fun today, this is cool.”…as she smiled 🙂

We then walked to the East TN Museum of History and the kids took in some local History.  The Museum had the 3rd floor open! The kids got to see the old library that is not normally open to the public 🙂

Last, we walked across downtown to Volunteer Landing on Neyland Drive. The roads were blocked off to motorist by local law enforcement so it was safe to walk. 3 radio stations were broadcasting, there were many vendors selling everything fried you could possibly think  of, and there was Live Entertainment from several stages. Boats leisurely floated along the Tennessee River and the atmosphere was wonderful! It felt like the fair. It took us about an hour to totally relax, leave work & worries behind, and …lose the kids 🙂  Okay, not really lose them in a panic – we lost them to their own excitement as they went their separate ways to meet up with friends, play games, win prizes, and act stupid without adult supervision 🙂

It was absolutely what I needed to pull out of my stubbornness & give my mindset a 180 turn-about. Nick told the kids to meet us at different intervals at a HUGE yellow rubber ducky 🙂

We spent the whole day downtown, even when it rained 🙂 It was nice!

 At 9:30pm the firework display started. About 15 minutes into the show, the sky broke open & rain began to come down in buckets! No sprinkle warnings! Hundreds of people ran for cover and we found solstice under a bridge for about 5 minutes.  Everyone fit under the bridge except my youngest son and I. My oldest son would have fit, but he was trying to be his girl friend’s umbrella. Finally, we made a run for it… through a crowd of people, all 6 of us attempted to stay together as we ran through the rain for cover. We were drenched! Soaking wet. Nick was trying to save the pizza we had bought earlier as he ran ahead, but ended up almost busting his rear-end wide open when he slipped and lost a box of soaking wet pizza on the ground. hahahahahahaha      He wasn’t hurt and didn’t fall. We eventually made it to the truck and all piled in. Wet, soppy soaked, we sat on the top of a parking garage parked in line to exit for an hour before we were able to leave.

It was the BEST Boomsday ever!!! I haven’t had this much fun in a looooong time!  🙂

I think I may be back 🙂