Week In Review: July 4 – 10

Last week began where the country started on Monday, July 4 (albeit a brief 235 years later) as folks in Ellisville and throughout the area watched an impressive fireworks display at Bluebird Park. If you missed the photos, or worse, Ellisvile's show, check out and bask in the glow of independence one last time for 2011.

Ballwin officially fell for Samantha Holmes last week, but with humor, poise and intelligence, it's not hard to see why. The 18-year-old who graduated from John F. Kennedy Catholic High School will head to Mizzou next year, but before the semester is over, she'll have a competitive detour in Disneyland: Following , she was awarded this year's National American Miss Missouri Teen title, setting the stage for the national competition in Anaheim, California around Thanksgiving.

Following last week's announcement, baseball fans can expect the , when some of the best young baseball talent from around the globe will get together to revel in America's Pastime in its own Midwestern backyard. Although the U-12 and U-15 teams from countries such as Japan and Australia have played in Ellisville before, the 2011 tournament will be the first time the games were hosted by the Ellisville Athletic Association.

After Twitter users diongarrett and JessAtSprout mentioned a local electrical outage, Ballwin-Ellisville Patch discovered that a snake at a substation outside Marshall. The result? About 14,000 Ameren customers in Ballwin and around 25,000 throughout St. Louis County had to cope with a morning short on electricity.

Ann Wagner of Ballwin opened her home to supporters last Thursday to officially in Missouri's 2nd District. Wagner set the stage for a platform centering on small business owners, and cited goals of lowering federal taxes and decreasing national spending. Wagner's decision will likely put her on the ballot against fellow Republican Ed Martin, a St. Louis attorney and former candidate for Democrat Russ Carnahan's third district seat in 2010.