It’s been a while since I’ve been able to enjoy Independence Day without having to work. Usually, I’m the one covering the holiday festivities and/or laying out the pages for the next day’s paper. However, I got lucky this year, when my anticipated July vacation—next week—had to be moved up to accommodate a colleague.

This meant I got to enjoy the day without the worry of getting people’s names for the photos, figuring out whether there was going to be a story on the festivities and wondering if I was going to be done with work in time to see some fireworks.

Normally, if I was working on Independence Day, I would be covering the parade in Bonduel, as that’s the biggest shindig in the county for the day. Starting at 11 a.m. and continuing for more than an hour, there are floats and vehicles and tons of candy being thrown.

However, at the same time each year, there is also a triathlon going on in Leopolis. Over the years, I would see our various sports editors come back with photos.

Now, normally you would think, if you’ve seen one running or bicycling photo, you’ve seen them all. In Leopolis, though, there’s a variety of categories for competitors, including the beer belly category. Sometimes competitors will do wacky things like riding a bicycle built for two while carrying squirt guns. Since I had the day off, I decided to go check out the triathlon, and while there weren’t quite the antics there were in previous years, I still got some awesome photos.

Later in the day, I visited my mother, as we planned to enjoy some fireworks later in the evening. My mother breeds purebred Australian shepherds, and one of her dogs had a litter about a month ago. Of course, everyone knows how cute puppies are, so my visit included some fun with six rolling balls of fur on a covered porch.

Being just a month old, the puppies were very curious about their surroundings, but they were not as active as puppies around adoption age (eight to nine weeks), which made it a little easier to get some awesome shots. The pups were eager to play with the tall, new stranger as they tugged at my shirt, nibbled on fingers and even tried to see what my camera bag tasted like.

Once we wore the puppies out, my mother and I drove over to Wittenberg to grab my sister to go to Tigerton for the fireworks show. Normally, July 4 sees me plopping down in a field in Bonduel for that village’s show, which eclipses the one in Shawano (held the night before) by far. Of course, the day had started with experiencing something different, so I figured I would see how Tigerton’s show stacked up.

We got a good viewing spot early, but we had to endure a little bit of rain, as the promised storms that the weathermen had claimed would hit in the mid-afternoon and would have no chance of impacting fireworks shows finally decided to make an appearance. However, it was nice to cool off the area after extreme mugginess had dominated for most of the day.

The rain must have been heavier elsewhere, as my eldest niece had to come home right after work when Wausau decided to cancel its show. We convinced her to come join us in Tigerton, as the show was still going on, and it turned out very nicely. It was only 15 minutes, but it was constant fireworks, so it was a dazzling display to experience and a terrific way to cap off Independence Day.

I might consider taking the holiday off more if it means trying some new things and being able to enjoy what I want to enjoy without the worry of a newspaper deadline. Don’t tell my boss, though.