Happy 4th of July

We had a great day. It was the only day in the last week where it hasn't rained! We were able to swim in the neighbor's pool, run errands, get some stuff done around the house. I cut Jacob's hair. He's thrilled with his new "do" at least temporarily. Of course it will be gone by 8/23 when school starts.



We had some friends over for dinner. Donny made fried chicken! I'd never had homemade southern fried chicken before and it was delicious! I contributed my garlic mashed potatoes. Laurie also made homemade strawberry shortcakes for dessert!

We headed outside for some low-key fireworks ... sparklers, smoke bombs, poppers and one or two bigger things which made a lot of noise and then the sheriff's deputy showed up. Luckily, we were pretty well done and didn't have anything crazy in the arsenal that would have given us a ticket. But we can't even have sparklers??? Seriously?

Earlier in the day I had taken some pictures of the deck progress. It took two days to get the roof up. The poor guys kept getting rained on and had to stop and start and stop and start over and over. But it looks fantastic now and the shade it gives is wonderful. Not only while we're outside, but the afternoon sun doesn't beat into that back window anymore so it's cooler in the house too.




There's finishing work to be done yet but it's really coming together and we are wondering why we didn't do this years ago!?!