Another celebration in Prescott

Prescott is sort of special to us. It took us six years of living in AZ to discover it, but we finally made our first trek there just a couple of hours after finding out that I am pregnant. It's such a cute town, with lots of shops, restaurants and saloons. And it just sort of feels alive somehow.


We were pondering whether we wanted to venture out into the heat to watch fireworks this year. It actually wasn't supposed to be too hot -- only about 104. In years past, when it's been 114, we've resorted to indoor BBQs and TV fireworks. Normally, 104 would be no problem at all. But in my pregnant state, it didn't sound all that appealing. But, still. I looooove the fourth and I looooove fireworks, and TV fireworks just aren't the same.

So when Mike read in the newspaper that Prescott was putting on a fireworks display, it took us all of 15 seconds to decide to go. It's only about an hour away, and it's 20 degrees cooler. Oh, yes please. We momentarily pondered getting a hotel room for the night, but decided we didn't feel like hunting one down or packing, so we just went up for a day trip and figured getting back late at night would be ok, since we both had the following day off of work.

We planned to shop a bit and grab some dinner before the fireworks, but it turns out that Prescott also holds a big downtown arts and crafts festival on the July 4th weekend, so we got to partake in that, too, before heading off to the brewery for some excellent grub.


It was the first time we'd been back to Prescott together (I was up there for a conference a few weeks ago) since the New Year's trip. It was fun to walk around - me being significantly bigger than last time - and remember how new the pregnancy was then. We walked past the sports bar where we watched some football and pondered whether lemonade was safe for me to drink, past the saloon where Mike had one New Year's Eve cocktail before deciding we should just spend the night cuddled up in our room, and into the cute little clothing store where we said we couldn't wait until we knew whether it was a boy or a girl so we could buy those sorts of cute little things.

Mike said he might even like Prescott more than Flag (GASP). At first I thought that was blasphemy, but the more I think about it, the more I agree. Prescott is a little closer and has more (and possibly better) shops than Flag (including our favorite Flagstaff candle store, which just happens to have a second location in Prescott), more bar options, good food, and a little more foot traffic.

Waiting for the fireworks to start... (He's a good foot warmer!)

The fireworks were awesome, and there was a good crowd without it being too crowded. And there were tons of kids running around, playing frisbee, throwing footballs or just being rambunctious and tackling each other. We talked about how pretty soon, that'll be our little guy running around.

It was a good fourth and possibly the start of a new tradition!