Fourth of July Celebration

This is a long, picture-ridden post. Proceed at your own risk.

Amy, Stephen, and Madelyn spent the day at the craft show selling our crafts. She had a good day and sold many of her knitted bags and clutches. Michael spent the day selling furniture at work. The other kids and I finished preparing the food, cleaning the house, and relaxing. I managed to make a dozen napkins from assorted fabrics in my material stash. Because I am cheap, I refuse to purchase paper napkins. Most of my kids don't get messy when they eat, but my youngest two daughters use their shirt fronts. To keep them from becoming social outcasts as adults, I decided to make napkins and teach them how to use napkins properly.

We all enjoyed an indoor picnic (all the picnic tables were being used at the craft show) consisting of chili dogs, Glenda's Gelatin Salad, baked beans, potato salad, potato chips, sliced tomatoes, and watermelon. We saved the brownies, Ginger shortbread, and star sugar cookies for munching throughout the evening.

Michael built a huge bonfire in the backyard, when we noticed the hot air balloons over our house. We watched many balloons in the field near our house and then piled into the car to see some of them land.







Some of the children were hot when we arrived back at the house, so we had our annual watermelon seed spitting contest. It was a sad occasion because I lost my title as Champion Spitter. I yielded my crown with good grace and hope to regain it from Joseph next summer.



Our next activity was to break our pinata that the kids had made earlier in the week. The pinata was originally going to be shaped like a hot air balloon, but there were some problems with the materials we had available. The next plan for the pinata was to paint it sky blue, then paint a hot air balloon in the center. No blue paint. We did have bright yellow paint, so Steve painted the circular blob yellow. After it had dried, I brought it into the house and drew smile faces on each side. Madelyn decided that it looked like Lord WaldeMart.



The kids had a blast beating Lord WaldeMart and enjoyed the grab for the candy.













Everyone was feeling that we didn't have enough sugar in our system, so we stopped to relax around the bonfire and toast marshmallows. The children ate s'mores until they were stuffed.



Then our family fireworks display began. Stephen decided that his sparklers were wands and shouts of "Expelliarmus" "Expecto Petronum" and others were heard until Mike stopped laughing and put an end to it.

We made it into bed around 12:30am. The neighborhood quieted down about 1 hour later. It was hard to get up at 6:00am the next morning to go to the craft show, but after several false starts we made it to the craft show on time.

Amy ended up with a slight burn on her face after sitting in partial sun all day. I sat in full sun most of the day and ended up with a "strawberry colored" face to quote Paige. My burn is slowly fading and will hopefully turn into a beautiful golden tan.