Fouth of July

I love Independence Day! It's a fun way to celebrate the freedoms we have in this great country we live in!
This year, we started out the day at a pancake breakfast at church which included a bike rodeo for the kids. Adam would have love the bike rodeo, but he had spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was still fun to watch the other kids.
After breakfast, Scott and I headed home to start the cooking. Scott, of course was doing most of the cooking - well, smoking! He stoked up the smoker, and smoked some meat. This was the third annual Independence Day smoke out, and the food just keeps getting better! I should have taken pictures of the food - we had great smoked ribs (with Blueberry Chipotle sauce!!, as well as two other sauces), and pork tenderloin sandwiches, along with salads and other yummies brought by friends.
We were blessed once again this year with awesome weather! It was in the mid 80's and a perfect day for playing outside in the pool. Here is Adam and his neighbor friend splashing each other. The kids had a great afternoon playing in the water and chasing eachother around the yard. We are blessed to have wonderful friends who joined us for the day! Adam had been looking forward to his friends coming over all week!
It turned out to be a perfect day! Great food and great company! Until - it was time for the fireworks. I'm not sure how it happened, but Adam has become terrified of fireworks! Last year, we mistankenly started the fireworks show with a loud one, and Adam wanted to go inside and wouldn't even watch out the window. So, we tried really hard to get quiet fireworks this year, and even took Adam with us to pick some out, thinking he might be excited to see the fireworks he picked out. Well - it didn't work... here is a picture of where Adam and I sat to watch the fireworks show...

At least he actually watched them this year. A few times he hid behind me and peeked out to see what was going on. And - I think he really did enjoy them. He was sad when it was all over. Maybe next year we can get him out on the porch. Although - everytime someone opened the front door to go in or out of the house, he plastered his hands over his ears and screamed to have the door closed. I do admit that there was a lot of noise - sometimes it sounded like a war zone out there! Either way - I'll be happy to sit inside at the window or outside on the porch to celebrate the Independence of our country.