Fourth of July Weekend

Just a few photos from the Fourth of July holiday weekend! We went to the town parade (lots of American flag chinos, dogs and firetrucks), celebrated Grandma's 81st birthday with lots of sparkler writing (above), and did many hours of house restoration. From cleaning out the garden shed to stripping paint off of doors I am definitely a 'good tired' today!  I'm also cringing as I realize how much time I have to spend working on the computer today for projects and meetings. At the very least I'll be working in my 'outdoor' office to deal with holiday weekend withdrawal. 

We decided to bring the party to Grandma for her birthday so we whipped up her favorite: American style picnic food. A huge head of cabbage from our CSA went for coleslaw (mustard and vinegar based) and I double deep fried chicken in a cast iron skillet. I mean, if you'e going to do 4th of July fried chicken, do it true to the recipe. We also picked up some gorgeous snapdragons to grace the deck table where we had dinner. It was the perfect viewing spot to see the fireworks in neighboring towns. 

And of course you can't have the 4th without fire works and sparklers! We spent at least an hour writing with sparklers. Since my siblings, the husband and myself all went to JMU there was some JMU pride and spelling of other 3 letter words. Also some confusion on which direction letters needed to face resulting in some spelling of rol vs lol in photos and some really bad looking ampersands.