Fourth of July Celebration

I hope y’all had a wonderful time celebrating the Fourth of July! It felt like our family had 3 Saturdays in a row, since Dad had Thursday and Friday off work. We had a very fun weekend celebrating our country’s birthday. . .

At the beginning of the summer, our family made a “Fun List” of things we wanted to do. One of those things was to go to the lake. It has been a family tradition to go to the lake at least once a summer, and we usually went during the first week of July while we were on vacation in Pennsylvania. Since we didn’t go to Pennsylvania this year, we had to substitute with one of the inland lakes here in north Texas.

So after breakfast on Thursday morning, we packed up our gear and headed out! We went to a campground where you could just pay for the day. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite what we expected when we thought of the “beach.”

The “beach” was only a couple feet wide! Apparently the lake is higher than normal. There were quite a few prickers in the grass, but thankfully we had brought blankets and shoes.

Ready to cool down!

Photo Credit: Betsy.

Once we got in, we had lots of fun! The sand bar went out really far. You can’t see us well in this photo, but we walked all the way out to a little island.

Photo Credit: Roma.

We had fun swimming, playing water sports, and relaxing on the blanket with books and snacks for several hours. Around 1:30, we called it a day. It was time to leave before things got REALLY hot. J

When we got home, the guys worked in the yard for a few hours while others exercised, and still others (like me J) took showers.

That evening, we had a festive dinner to celebrate. It was even cool enough that we could eat outside! We had burgers hot off the grill (I of course, had to top mine with everything! J) patio potato salad, berries with whipped cream, pretzel salad, and lemonade. It was perfect!

For dessert we had a watermelon bomb made out of sherbet! It was very refreshing (recipe coming soon!)

After dinner, we had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows for s’mores. We laughed a LOT! Apparently some of us have a touch of ADD. We’d turn our heads for just a minute, and turn around to a flaming marshmallow. And of course there was the time a piece of flaming paper flew out of the pit and towards one of those distracted people, causing them to leap backwards out of their chair. J Yes folks, we have fun!

Photo Credit: Roma.

Around 9:30 p.m., we did our backyard fireworks. Being our first 4^th of July in Texas, we quickly learned that folks down here do a bit more than they did up north. The backyard fireworks we used to do would only go about 6 feet up and 2 feet out max. We bought the equivalent pack down here…and evidently a lot more power is legal! The fireworks were shooting up over the house!

What’s really neat about living in the country is that you can look in any direction and see someone else’s fireworks display. We counted at least 5 big fireworks displays that we could see!

We ended the evening with sparklers! These are funny, because they have a way of making teenagers act like 5-year-olds. J They’re just so fun!

We turned in pretty late that night, but we were happily exhausted from such a full and fun day!