4th of July

Our 4th of July party is coming together.
This website helped get my juices flowing.

#1 on my "smart idea" list : We've invited friends who don't care how the house looks.

The house actually looks fairly decent, but I'd feel obligated to make it look great if we had a different crowd of people coming. Dave did TONS of yardwork last night. I think he was out there past dark! It needed done soooo badly. I'm just no help at all this summer. He said he only got about 20% of it done. I'm so thrilled for what he got accomplished, though.

We've got flags out everywhere. The dollar store was sold out when I checked, but Wal-mart had a good price on them (2/$1.86) for the hand-held ones.

A few activities for the kids planned (3-legged race, water balloons, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, sparklers). On the 3rd, I had them take the black styrofoam trays from the trayed corn on the cob and make fireworks by blowing red, white & blue paint through a straw. We hung them on the bathroom door. There's really no point in over planning -- they'll just want to run through the house screaming and chasing each other all day, anyway.

I thought I'd have them watch the America Rock portion of Schoolhouse Rock. That set of 20 minutes worth of cartoon songs tells the story as succinctly and memorably as about anything I can think of..."and the shot heard round the world, was the start of the revolution..."

The food is bought and prepped, including the Rocket Popsicles we made last night with Jello & Whipped Cream. I've come to LOVE Aldi's supermarket.

If we can stay awake that long, we're going to try and take the kids to the fireworks. Believe it or not, we've never made it to watch the fireworks since we've had kids.

It should be a relaxing, easy-going, flag waving, Sousa-playing day...of course, I'm awake at 4:30am, so I may be a tad-bit tired for 9am Mass on the 4th. It sounds rediculous, but I'll just go upstairs and take a short nap while our friends are here ... ANOTHER advantage to celebrating with good friends.

I pray for America that we may be made worthy to live out the freedoms and responsibilities we've been granted by God.