Born on the Fourth of July

Today is my beloved Aussie sister's birthday.  I used tell her that here in the U.S. we always celebrated in a grand way with a holiday, complete with fireworks.  My heart ached a bit today.

We spent the day on Gibson Island with our dear friends Tom and Caroline.  After lunch we took the golf cart down to the main thoroughfare through the island and watched the annual Gibson Island 4th of July parade.  Many families start planning their entries for this parade in the winter and so besides the police, fire department and veterans, there were dozens of decorated golf carts and cars with all kinds of themes from Batman and Super Mario, to Taylor Swift and Barbie.... such a lot of fun.

After a superb dinner we headed back to the shores of the island to watch fireworks over the Chesapeake Bay.  I did not prepare to photograph this and only had my iPhone and RX100m7 with me.  I tried setting the RX100 for fireworks, but without a tripod, the photos were awful.  The winner, of course was the iPhone 14 Pro Max which took this shot.  I have included and extra of the parade. 

While we were having a drink back at the house before bed, we got word that our friends' had a new grand niece.  Cheers to my sis and the new babe.