July 4th Weekend

What a great 4th of July weekend! Hubby took Thursday off and spent a great morning with the kids. I couldn’t handle it anymore and ended up leaving work around lunch time to go and hang out with them. We went to lunch at the “hot dog place” (Skyline) and then went and got some more Cars cars. My dad came up that night and surprised the kids (I didn’t tell them he was coming).

On Friday (the 4th) it was cold! I had everyone in shorts and then looked at the temp outside and it was 65 degrees! And rainy! So we changed into pants and headed to the grocery store. I had watched Live with Regis and Kelly that morning and they have these Friday specials called “Grilling with the Stars.” They made two things that I decided I wanted to make that day, instead of your normal hamburgers and hot dogs.

After grocery shopping we headed home and the kids took naps. It’s weird, this was the first year that we really didn’t have any plans. No one coming over, no picnic, nothing. So hubby called up the guys at our local police station (they are one of his clients) and asked if they wanted to come and have dinner. I made my recipes (I have copied them below) and three police officers came over. It was honestly one of the best 4th of Julys I’ve ever had! My food was a GIGANTIC hit! And I wasn’t stressed about entertaining at all. The officers were so nice – they kept asking me if there was anything they could help with.

After we ate we hung out for a while. My daughter took one officer back to the swing set, and my son took another out to place baseball. To anyone driving by our house would have been a strange site with three police cruisers in the court and officers playing in the yard, but thankfully our neighbors are quite used to it by now :)

Later that night, after everyone had left, we sat in our driveway and watched a bunch of different fireworks that people were letting off. We were going to actually go to a set, but since it had been raining off and on all day, we decided the grass would be too wet and we’d be miserable. We headed in to bed around 11:30.

Saturday was gorgeous, so we headed outside to play. Our friends (the ones moving) asked us if we wanted to go with them out on their boat, so we spent the afternoon out on the lake. The kids had a blast and my son actually fell asleep during part of the ride!

Sunday was again beautiful, so we set up our little pool, our little shade-tent thing and sat outside. Two sets of our neighbors came over and spent some time hanging out while all the kids played in the pool. After that we went to church and then out for dinner.

When hubby and I got into bed, we could hear our son talking to himself. They had been in bed for about an hour, but he just wasn’t tired, so we brought him in with us and got some really special cuddle time. He was so cute! He kept trying to “warm hubby’s ears up” which made both of them laugh. The only bad part was that he started crying about his feet hurting. I figured it was because he had run around all afternoon without any shoes, and his little feet just aren’t used to that. So I gave him some Tylanol and got him some ice and he was fast asleep within minutes. A perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

Now I’m super busy until the beginning of August when we do our next filing. While I’m not looking forward to the stress of the next couple of weeks, I am excited that this is my last quarterly filing before the baby gets here!!!

Here are some pictures and the fantastic recipes I made!


Cajun Firecracker Shrimp:

INGREDIENTS:
2lbs shrimp, tails on
1 onion finely chopped
1cup peanut oil
2tbsp cajun seasoning (to make your own Cajun seasoning: 1 ½ teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon onion powder, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon pepper.)
1 tbsp chopped garlic
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp rosemary
1tsp thyme
skewers

DIRECTIONS:
Put shrimp in plastic bag, combine all ingredients in small bowl and
pour in bag with shrimp when your done. (reserve some sauce for basting)
refrigerate 1 or 2 hours.
Put shrimp on skewers.
Grill on medium heat.
Baste with remaining sauce while grilling.

Dipping sauce for shrimp:

1 stick unsalted butter
About 8 dashes of tabasco
A little fresh parsley


Red, White and Blue Fireworks Salad:

watermelon, blueberries, cucumber, feta, mint & lime juice


Growing up, hubby said that it was a tradition to take a family picture on the 4th each year (writing the date somewhere so you knew what year it was), so hubby's dad asked us to take one of our family this year to get the tradition back going again.