The First Annual, The...Fourth Annual?

I hope everyone had a lovely Independence Day this year - we did. Frankly, at this point in my life I was just hoping for a low key day that made my kids happy but didn't require much out of me. I'm pathetic.

This year we had a first. It was the First Annual Neighborhood Pancake Breakfast, hosted by our church. I think a lot of other churches/neighborhoods host something like this on the 4th of July every year, but with Troy being in our ward's bishopric he was quite involved in the planning and carrying out of the breakfast. Sorry honey, it was a total success and I'm sure you'll be doing it again next year! It was a lot of work for a lot of people but I really thought it was fun and went really well. Face painting, a 5K, pancakes and sausage and fruit - how could it go wrong?

We also enjoyed the ongoing (third? fourth?) annual tradition of spending the afternoon and evening at the home of The Becky. It's so mellow there - the kids just play and Becky and I can sit and....just sit. That's all we want. Her hubby grills up some burgers and then we have a lovely 7 p.m. fireworks display. It's not dark yet, but we're not telling the kids that the fireworks look better at night. It's not worth staying up for. Okay, maybe someday it will be, but not yet! Other years we have come home and had front-yard fireworks with our next door neighbors, but their son is growing up and spent the holiday with a friend, so we missed out on that impromptu tradition this year. Also in other years we've climbed up in the attic and watched the fireworks at the stadium from our attic window, but they didn't have them there this year. Fine by me. It was a nice day without a ton of hoopla. Just enough for the kids to enjoy it, for sure. We'll have more hoopla-filled Independence Days in the future. And for a funny and sort of true history lesson on the 4th of July, check out The Misty's Blog. I enjoyed that quite a lot.