Glorious Fourth

Hurrah for the Fourth of July!

I love this holiday, especially with kids. I love the music, the color scheme, the swells of patriotism in the heart and lungs. The parades (WHY must every parade involve the tossing of insane amounts of candy?)! The barbecues!

Here's how we celebrated:
Our Allandale neighborhood parade, at 9:00 a.m., starring my husband and two older children on decorated bikes with patriotic mohawks:


Caroline and her friend Benjamin watching:


Then some fooling around in the yard with Shanta, our neighbor:


Some brewing of Robber Soup (my kids love to mix up these nasty brews using weird spices and any liquids they can find; the theory is that any ill-intentioned prowlers in our yard would spy the soup, slurp some up, and immediately fall over dead.)


Some playing in the other neighbor's pool:


A barbecue and HOURS of pool play at the home of the Meades', recent transplants from California whose home we have haunted as much as humanly possible in the past week, LOL.


A different kind of soup, this time of the kid variety:


The creative-jump contest:


The singing of God Bless America before tying into the Fourth of July cupcakes (sub-theme of the day: all-American refined SUGAR):


(I'd let you see the video of that moment, but since I was holding the camera, my own voice ended up being slightly too prominent for public consumption!)

The bedtime story, a book we read once a year:



Oh, and another tradition I can't post a picture of: Every year, as we drive around on the Fourth to our activities, we play a collection of downloaded patriotic music in the car. Our kids love this, especially (surprisingly) Ian! And this was the first year that I didn't get all choked up while belting out Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." But it was close! (What? Stop looking at me like that!) I've been reading a book about gospel missions in Asia, and so this year the fact that we can live in relative peace and comfort here (I know, it's not perfect by a long shot, but relative to many places in the world, we have it REALLY good!), and that we can worship and share our faith without being tortured or thrown into prison (and others of different faiths can do the same) is particularly poignant to me. Even that we have this much-debated election, as tiring as the back-and-forth can be -- look at Zimbabwe! They had an "election," but it was a total sham, the defeated incumbent still refuses to step aside, and his cronies are beating and killing anyone suspected of voting for the opposition. I mean, really.

Cheesy as it may sound, I AM proud -- no, humbled -- to be an American.