I LIKE THAT BOOM BOOM POW...

Massey's high school band has a Fireworks Tent to raise money for the Band and Guard.

These kids have a ball when they are together and what a great group of kids they are.

I cannot say enough positive things about this band program. The parent participation is what makes it all work so smoothly. I feel terrible that I have fallen so behind in MY volunteering, but keeping a roof over our heads has kind of taken up most of my time in the past six months.

The band is an eclectic and varied group. There are underclassmen upperclassmen skinny kids and big kids. Blacks Whites Latinos and Asians...even Native Americans. They are ALL Marching Indians and a group I am lucky to have my daughter be a part of.

I love having teen agers (hope my kids don't read this, it'll ruin my reputation as the "Bad Cop." )

They keep me feeling young, make me LOOK older and are definitely not helping me in the gray hair department...but I love having kids around my house and at least I always know where MY kids are!

My middle son rolled his eyes when he saw the title to this post, but it seemed to go along with the Fireworks theme and happens to be a very cool song by the Black Eyed Peas. At least at fifty I KNOW who the Black Eyed Peas are.

Thanks to Massey and her guard I even know who Ke$ha is....and who told this girl that a dollar sign was a letter? "Tick Tock" is her big song and Massey has beat it into my head so much that even I know the words now.

The lyrics aren't exactly VBS material, but I know they mean nothing more to Massey than a song with a good beat and something that the guard likes to do their little dance to. I can't really imagine any of the Guard brushing their teeth with a bottle of "Jack" or "Kicking a man to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger." Number one: Mick Jagger is ugly as sin and Number two: I don't have any Jack Daniels in my house...maybe a Charlie Daniels album (I always loved The Devil Went Down To Georgia.)

Songs are just songs and kids will be kids.

Massey is all into the band...Zach is all into Zach.

It's midnight...now officially the Fourth of July. That means Zach's buddies have just arrived to shoot off fireworks in our back yard. Guess I am the only Mom that relented or is stupid enough to let some eighteen year old boys build a fire in the fire pit and keep Mr. "Slow" Lee next door from sleeping. We'll see how far they get before my husband wakes up and chases them all off, turning me from "Bad Cop" to "Good Cop."

The fire pit just lit with the "Phooff" of gasoline they used to give it a rapid start and it looked like an Atom bomb going off.

"BOYS."

I have to remind myself..."I like that Boom Boom Pow."

The bottle rockets are going up, the fire pit is roaring and five eighteen year old boys are happy as pigs in poop.

It could be worse...they could be drinking or doing drugs. Instead they are working on getting me kicked out of the subdivision.

Then again...who would cut the entrance to the subdivision twice for a measly forty bucks a month...who would cut all the neighbor's yards that won't cut them on their own? And who would there be to talk to the cops when they arrive at my house in about fifteen minutes?

Okay, my husband just woke up...things should be getting interesting now. He came downstairs looking like Homer Simpson in his whitey tighties and said "I guess we were the only idiots that would let them into a back yard."

I told him pretty much he was right and at least the fire works seemed to running out.

"I Like That Boom Boom Pow."

Let's just hope the woods behind my house don't ignite, and hope that the one kid that looks thirty years old is driving the other num nuts home.

"Oh to be a Cotton...tis a great thing." Unless I get arrested.