4th of July weekend

It has been an absolutely fantastic 4th of July weekend. I always have high expectations for this weekend each year as it is my absolute favorite holiday of the year - and this year those expectations were met - with a few hiccups along the way.

Saturday morning we decided to take a bike ride to the dog park so we could get some exercise riding and Gromit could get some exercise running around the dog park. Here's a picture of Dave with Gromit in the dog trailer. So funny, but it works!

Gromit isn't thrilled about riding in it yet, but I think as he rides it in more he'll get used to it and stop resisting to get in and enjoy the ride.

At the dog park there is a pond for the dogs to jump in and swim in and Gromit has been resistant to actually swimming and prefers to lay down in the shallow part of the water to cool off. But on Saturday he surprised us and followed some much bigger dogs into the water chasing after a ball. After he got into the deeper part of the water he turned around and swam back. Too cute! We've never seen him do that before but we hope he'll do it again sometime.

On Sunday we got ready to go to the park and host a BBQ for some of our friends and then hang out until the city fireworks started. I was making deviled eggs and a patriotic cake for the BBQ. The deviled eggs turned out so well until the car ride to the park knocked them on top of each other. Good thing I have photographic evidence of how they looked before the accident.

I had my usual failure with baking while trying to make a patriotic cake. My idea was to make a round cake with red and blue cake layers and white icing. Very festive, right? The first cake I baked tasted great but the blue layer fell apart when I took it out of the pan. I swear, it was baked through and I let it cool for a long time before I took it out of the pan, but because I' have a baking handicap, it just fell apart.

So back to the store I went for another box of cake mix. At least with making another cake I had the opportunity to add a white cake layer (because the red layer from the first attempt turned out fine). So after my second try I prevailed and conquered the cake! The only other disappointment was that the icing looked pretty bad, but I was willing to let that slide since I had such difficulty with the actual cake. Oh well!

Our BBQ at the park was cut short when high winds and heavy rain almost took out our canopy - we were having to physically hold it down to keep the wind from blowing it away! Luckily only a few things ripped on our canopy walls and can be easily fixed with some simple sewing. We packed everything up and headed back to our apartment to finish out the BBQ. Dinner was much better when we didn't have to worry about blowing away or getting wet! We thought the city might cancel or postpone the fireworks because the weather was so bad but they said it was still going to happen.So after dinner and dessert we piled back into the car, drove to the park and watched fireworks from the car where we were nice and dry. All in all, it was a great 4th of July!

Today we have spent the day cleaning up, doing laundry, repairing our canopy and getting ready for the upcoming week. I even made a summer time wreath to replace my patriotic welcome sign on the front door. I'm prety proud of the wreath and Dave doesn't think it is half bad either.

I hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July weekend! We are so lucky to live in a free country and to have brave men and women willing to put their lives on the line to protect that freedom for us. Thank you all!