July 4th

July 08, 2015

July 4th

We had no great plans to celebrate July 4th. Springboro was celebrating its bicentennial the whole weekend at North Park. There were a lot of activities planned there and I'm sure there tons of people there. I was actually going to volunteer to help with this event but then we thought we may be out of town on vacation during it so I didn't. I certainly thought we'd go to it at a minimum if we were in town. But, July 4th morning came and we were so thankful to be at home. The girls and I had been gone the whole day previous at Conner Prairie and Donnie had worked. It was just so nice to be at home; none of us could muster the energy necessary to pull off a trip out of the house. I was reading a good book that I didn't want to put down, the girls were playing nicely together, Jacob was Playstationing and Donnie was putzing around the house and texting a neighbor about getting together later for a cookout. Around 2:00 pm., I texted Cory (cook out neighbor friend) to coordinate cook out items and then headed out to Kroger.

We knew we needn't go anywhere for fireworks after the cook out. A pyrotechnic loving neighbor breaks the law for our firework gazing pleasure by buying obscene amounts of illegal fireworks and lighting them in our cul- de-sac. He did this last year and we knew he planned on doing it this year because he remarked to his next door neighbor that he (the illegal firework purchaser) hoped no one would call the police on him.

Before we ate, many of the kids on our street played Futsal/ soccer in the cul- de-sac. All three of our kids played (had to drag Abby out there as she is not a natural born sports player) and I loved seeing them all out there! Jacob and Alyssa were on the same team. I loved hearing them call for the ball and working together. Abby was not on their team and anytime Alyssa and Abby both came near the ball, they giggled together. So much fun and no one really cared who won.

After dinner at our neighbor's house (we usually eat outside when we're having an informal cook out but since steak was on the menu we wanted the sturdiness of a table under our plates), we hung out outside, slapping mosquitoes (always too late, though) while waiting for our neighbor's ~~illegal activities~~ fireworks to begin. As soon as the evening light faded, the show began. We went across the street and sat in Jamie and Cory's front yard so we were about, oh, 20 feet from where the fireworks were being lit. We were one errant firework away from damage to our person and/ or property but thankfully, all went well. The only downside to being so close was that we had to tilt our heads back to see the fireworks (sort of like sitting in the front row of a movie theater) and by the next morning, my neck hurt. The fireworks were impressive but there were just so many of them so that after while we stopped watching them. Instead, Cory and I lit sparklers for the kids. We could still hear the fireworks so we were in the 4th celebratory zone that's for sure.

It was a good low key, non injury sort of July 4th. It couldn't have been better...well, maybe if we had been at the beach like we originally were planning to be on the 4th.

For the cookout- I made these white chocolate covered pretzels and a "fruit pizza." Cory made a cute red, white and blue cake and she had ingredients for s'mores. So sugar intake was not an issue for our cook out!