Independence Day Weekend!

I love The Fourth of July!  It's one of my favorite holidays.  We were happy that we had some kids here this year!  Brian and Chelsea came over from Farmington, and Amy drove up from Phoenix.  It was a great weekend!

Brian and Chelsea came over on Thursday.  They left after Brian got off work.  On  Friday morning, Brian went out and fed the chickens and inspected the garden.  He found four artichokes ready to eat, and about a jillion more started.  The dad and I had looked a few days before and hadn't noticed any artichokes at all.  We steamed them and ate them with lemon-butter.  MMM-mmmm artichokes!

On Friday morning, while it was still cool, we took the Frisbee Golf stuff and went up to McGaffee to play for awhile.  The weather was cool and delightful.

We played 24 "holes."

It's a fun game.  

Sometimes, the frisbee just plain doesn't land where you want it to land.

Syncronized throwing!

More syncronized throwing!

It took us about ten tries on two cameras to get this shot!

This is Amy holding the keys from her new school and her classroom!

We had a ton of broccoli in the refrigerator.  We made a Broccoli Breakfast Casserole from the "...Chicken" and the "...Casserole" books, sort of.

It's not The Fourt of July without Bocce!

The men-folk beat the socks off the women-folk.

It was fun, anyway.

Amy made chocolate cheesecake bars from the "...Chocolate" and "...Cake Mix" books, sort of.

We cooked beets from our garden in the solar oven.  Amy had never seen the solar oven before.  She was amazed, and pleased!

Amy and Chelsea wipe the peels right off the beets!

Of course, we played "Ticket to Ride."  I love that game!  As usual, Chelsea won!

Amy and Chelsea scruched together so I could take this picture of them eating Lemon Ice Cream.

This is Brian and the dad after I asked them to scrunch together for a picture with the ice cream.

We played fruit basket while we were waiting for the City Fireworks Display.  Brian was WAY, WAY behind from the very beginning of the game.  He said, "If anybody gets all four 13s,  I'm still losing."  I think he wound up with three of the four 13s anyway.  Amy said, "Brian, sometimes I just really like it when you lose!"  (Maybe you had to be there.)  We got to the final round, and Brian was over 200 points behind everyone else.  But the Chelsea wound up taking over 250 points in the last round and became the First Loser after all!

After everyone left, the dad sighed and said, "Mothers aren't the only ones who have a hard time when their kids leave."