SUMMER DAYS 35 & 36 July 3 & 4

On Friday morning, Samuel, Sarah & I made our trek to a town on Interstate a little north of here to pick up Savannah. It's our meeting place when she goes to visit her girlfriends. Seeing these girls & their mom was such a treat! Watching the girls all say goodbye, however, was hard. They love each other dearly & miss each other so much between visits. Knowing that it'll be Christmastime or possibly next summer before another visit, parting was hard. They shared hugs & last minute words before crawling into separate vehicles to head home. Despite the sadness, I was able to elicit a grin from Savannah before we drove away. (I took pictures of her girlfriends, too, but prefer to protect their family's privacy, so I'm not posting those.)


We made it home in time to make supper & enjoy our first meal together as a family in over a week. It was nice to have all three kids under 1 roof again. There's something to be said for the security of having everyone here, tucked into beds in the same bedroom to watch a movie together. Of course, there's also something to be said for the distance a visit with girlfriends provides for the eldest two who fight like cats & dogs when they're together. :::sigh::: Absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder, ya know?

Last night, I made my weekly trip to the grocery store. I was talking about my obsessive-compulsive tendancies with a couple of friends this past week & had to take a picture of this for them. Yes, I write out my list like this every week. It bugs me to have to re-walk the same areas of the store over & over. This prevents that!


And that brings us to today---the 4th of July!!

You can read about our mid-day lunch with old friends in the previous post. The rest of this happened after that visit.

This past week, a friend of mine introduced me to the "Fire Cake". I don't know the real name of the cake, but that's the name she gave it....because the first time she made it, the pan overflowed & caught fire in her oven. :) I figured a "fire cake" was needed on Independance Day. After all, fire works, fire cake....yep...it fits. So today, I made a Fire Cake! If you want a rich, extremely moist cake that doesn't require frosting, go for it. These are the ingredients.


Mix the cake mix like you normally would, then blend in the pudding mix & sour cream. Then fold in the chips. (The recipe called for mini-chips but I couldn't find the teeny ones....the regular ones worked just fine.) Bake at the temp the box suggests, but beware, it'll take a lot longer to get done than usual. I had to cook mine for right at an hour to get it cooked through. The toothpick or knife test won't work due to the chocolate chips throughout, but when the center stops looking watery/wobbly & you can touch it and it bounces back in the center, you know it's done. Everyone enjoyed a piece, or two, tonight!



After the kids all took a shower & got into their pajamas, we headed to our traditional fireworks display. We park across the street from the church where it's held & watch from our car. I tried to get some decent pictures of the fireworks, but they were all sorta blurry. This one of my pajama clad kiddos will have to do.



I hope you had a great 4th of July. God bless America!