Sand and Sangria, Hot Dogs and Fireworks

Our fourth of July celebration started with the ladies (Alisha, Melissa, Katie and myself) heading over to the farmers market - which was unfortunately about half the size of the Wednesday one, now we know - to buy some fruit for sangria. We ended up with a meyer lemon, 3 blood oranges (for a dollar!) and some fresh lemonade which we ended up giving to John instead of using for the sangria. We then stopped for a pizza lunch, bought some wine as well as some cheap water bottles to make the sangria, and headed back to our place. 

John showed up and the five of us hung out at our place for a while, watching music videos and waiting for Brandon to drive down from Malibu. After Brando's arrival we went and bought sandwiches which we took down to the Santa Monica beach. We picnic'd, swam (not Melissa and me, we were on stuff-watching duty and by the time they came back to let us go in we were too cold from the wind), and had a beach photo shoot. 

Filled with sangria and covered with sand, we came back to our place to drop some stuff off and giggle and be merry. We had missed the Santa Monica fireworks - they were on the 3rd. We actually noticed them the night before while walking to see Up but assumed they would have them two nights in a row. Incorrect. - So we drove down to Venice to try to catch the Marina del Rey fireworks from the beach.

Venice, which is pretty sleazy any day of the year, was a colorful and entertaining choice for the 4th of July. There were illegal fireworks going off everywhere, and the plethora of cops just stood and watched them go without doing anything. From the spot we selected on the beach we were able to see not only the illegal ones exploding right over our heads every few minutes, and not only the Marina del Rey displace, but we could see two other firework shows down the Coast including the Manhattan Beach ones. 

Alisha, Brandon, and I grabbed some customary 4th of July hot dogs  while we made our way back to the car, and then the whole lot of us decided to head over to Brando's to sit in his hot tub. Turns out that his building closes the hot tub at 10pm, and we were all so disappointed and exhausted at that point that we just headed home and passed out. 

All in all, a very delightful 4th of July with good company and good fun. See the 'book and flickr (latter is linked above) for photos. 

Bye kids,

Sarah