Happy Fourth!

A belated happy Fourth of July!

The weather was absolutely beautiful, if a little chilly in the shade. Perfect, really!

In the morning we watched the parade. Who knew there were so many tractors in North Carolina?

We had our yearly barbecue sandwiches and snow cones, and the kids competed in the games. They came in third in their age group in the egg toss, but otherwise .... Well, athletics are not our strong suit. But they had fun!

They really did have fun!

 Here they are, lined up for the egg toss. Their strategy was to just let the egg hit the ground. This actually worked quite well, and when the egg finally did break, at least no one was covered in egg stuff!

 (You can see the flying eggs, in the upper left corner!)

And here, after the balloon toss. The approach that worked well for the egg turned out to be completely unsuccessful for the water balloon, which burst when it hit the ground on the first toss!

We also celebrated Travis's birthday (by putting up balloons and supplying pizza and ice cream -- my never keen party giving skills have dwindled to pretty much nothing), and Ed made a really first class stuffed crust pizza. Plus a couple non-stuffed crust pizzas

Ed, eating ice cream.

 Here is the sundae "bar." The kids were pleased with the variety of toppings, so I claim party planner success!

The rest of the day the kids played across the street, helped direct parking (a mission trip fund raiser our guests were working on), swam, played kick ball, etc. They came back (at least, mine did) in time to watch the fireworks with us from the front yard. It was a good day!