Happy Birthday, America!

As with probably everyone else's weekend, ours was fully focused around 4th of July celebrations. We did get some bad news as we learned that Hubby's granny headed home to be with Jesus on Saturday morning. It was certainly bittersweet as everyone is certainly said she's gone, but she lived a great life & is in such a better place! Praise God that we have the assurance of heaven & eternal life with our Heavenly Father.

Back to the 4th of July celebrations...Friday night we started off with some preparation for our family's annual 4th of July gathering. My dad has always been in charge of buying the fireworks & it seems every year we buy more & more. We met up with my parents, & my brother & sil for dinner on Friday night and then finished up the evening by filling the back of my dad's suburban with tons of fireworks.

Saturday I headed to work for the morning while Hubby ran some errands. We grabbed some lunch & then I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen fixing up some great sweets for Sunday. I made Fudge Revel Bars & Lemon Raspberry bars--I'll share those recipes sometime soon, they were both delicious. Saturday night we went to one of our favorite local pizza joints for dinner & took care of a little bit of shopping. It was a fairly early night for us, but we had a big day ahead on Sunday.

Sunday brought a GREAT patriotic service at church. We sang patriotic songs & our pastor reminded us how important it is for Christians to be active & involved in our governmental process. What a blessing it is to live in America!

Then it was time to party! We loaded up Bogey, the desserts, & some extra fireworks & headed down to my parents' house. The afternoon was spent getting all the details in order & just spending some quality time with my mom & dad. Everyone started arriving about 5 & we filled our plates full of all sorts of yummy food! It seems everyone in our family loves dogs & this year it couldn't have been more evident. We had about 18-20 people there & 9 dogs. Yup...9 DOGS!!! Almost a 2-1 ratio of people to dogs. It was quite entertaining watching them all interact!

I only managed to get 6 in a photo at once. This one includes Bailey, Josie, Romo, Bogey, Yadi & Jack...Dallas, Reba, & Jazz were missing.

After dinner we had some extra time before it was dark enough to start blowing stuff up so we had some great fellowship & also a pretty intense Cornhole tournament. I think Hubby & my Grandpa Smart came out as the winning team!


My grandma's enjoyed the entertainment for sure!

We finally got everything loaded up & headed down to the launch site...

With all those fireworks we better get started!

My cousin Brian took charge of mosquito control!

One of the highlights of the evening was a new item called the Sky Lantern..it acted as a hot air balloon & actually looked really neat up in the sky!

Up, up, & away...

Can you see it? Who knows how far it went!

All of those involved in setting everything off...it's quite the production every year!

Lined up & ready to go!

We involved the gallery with some sparklers...can't have 4th of July without Morning Glory sparklers!

Ooooohhhhhh....Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!! We had such a fabulous show!

Bogey wasn't bothered at all by the noise...he was much more interested in his bone!

Cleaning up...there's always so much trash, but we have such a great time!

We finally made it home about midnight...I was exhausted!!! Hubby & I were both off work today and I have to admit that we didn't even get up until 9. I made crescent roll cinnamon rolls for breakfast & then we actually got back in bed and laid around for most of the morning. We did finally head to lunch & watching an afternoon movie..."Grown Ups"...it wasn't the funniest movie I've ever seen but it also wasn't terrible. Just a nice way to spend an afternoon. We're spending the rest of the evening at home, enjoying the rest of our day off! It's back to work tomorrow!