Happy Birthday Pittsburgh, the BIG 2-5-0!!

Our Buddies and us have been looking forward for some time to help Pittsburgh celebrate it's 250th Birthday yesterday. We started out the chilly morning on the banks of the Allegheny River watching a Floatilla (a boat parade). The boats, and there were ALL kinds, floated up and down all three rivers where they join at The Point. We saw canoes, kayaks, recreational boats, houseboats, clipper boats, very big barges, crane boats, and even floating laboratory boats.

This is The Point State Park. In honor of the big Birthday Bash they dyed the water. I think they were going for Red to be patriotic, but instead it looked like hot pink.

Behind us is a parade of Eagle Scouts throughout the Pittsburgh area. They are carrying a humongous American Flag for the flag ceremony.

Here we are with our buddies: There's us; Richy, Marie and Linus; Heather, Jake and Oliver. We really missed our other Pittsburgh buddies who have since moved away.

The boys thought the pink water was HILARIOUS!!

This is a picture of the Duquense Incline. Back in the day when Pittsburgh was all about the steel industry the hills were lined with these inclines and that is how the steel workers would commute to work every day. Now there are just a couple left.

One shot of beautiful Pittsburgh. To the left is the West End Bridge and then the Science Center where Carter and I frequent and next to that is Heinz Field home to the biggest religion in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Now for all the grumping and bashing that I do on Pittsburgh, which I do quite a bit, I need to also say there is quite a bit of AWESOME things here as well. Never have I lived nor will I probably live again in a place with such history. 250 years for the United States is pretty old. Not that there aren't places that are older, but this just isn't when the area was first founded but when the city was first established as the city of Pittsburgh. With that said, that is also one of my biggest complaints about the city is that everything is SOO OLD and falling apart. But back to the positive: Downtown Pittsburgh is GORGEOUS!! The skyline is remarkable. Pittsburgh is loaded with beautiful wooded parks that make you feel like you have left the city and are hiking in the woods. The city also has great kid events and attractions. We love the Science Center, the Children's Museum, the Zoo, etc. We have met friends here that we will cherish forever. And the very reason for this post is that Pittsburgh is fond of their festivals! Almost any weekend through the summer or fall you can find at least one festival in and around the Pittsburgh area. Just about every weekend night through the summer we hear fireworks going off from somewhere. Pittsburgh LOVES their fireworks. The Fourth of July show was one of the best I have ever seen, I was super duper impressed. BUT THEN the fireworks last night "blew" those ones out of the water:

This picture came from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and is just a small sample of the fireworks we saw last night. The show last night was the BIGGEST firework show ever done in the whole United States and is going in the Guinness Book of World Records. It was jaw dropping!! They had seventeen different launch points up and down the three rivers, off the skyscrapers, PNC Park, The Point, and the bridges. Everywhere you looked you saw fireworks. And as you can kind of see too the fireworks reflect off of the buildings in the background that just made it all that much cooler. It was pretty cool to be apart of History last night and made me proud to be a Pittsburgher (at least for a day, wink wink).