4th of July

Our 4th was pretty laid back and involved quite a bit of food and lots of friends - my kind of holiday! After sleeping in a bit, I went berry picking with my friend, Florence. We got some sweet cherries and raspberries. I'm telling you, fresh raspberries are so crazy delicious...it rivals a lot of candy in my opinion.  

Florence and her husband, Edgar, stayed for lunch with us and we grilled steaks and ate way too much for it to only be lunchtime. After lunch, we (Florence and I) finished making the Pioneer Woman's Key Lime Pie. Guys, this is seriously incredible pie! I made everything from scratch for the first time...made the graham cracker crust, hand whipped the cream, zested the limes, etc. It was SO worth the time spent. Sadly, this pie went very quickly and is already gone. I have a sneaking suspicion I will be making it again very soon.

Yes, the whipped cream to pie ratio is correct. 

After a nap for Kory and dishwashing/kitchen cleaning for me (I think I got the short end of the stick!), we headed to what is known as the Happy Fun House for a BBQ/4th of July party. Thanks to Pinterest, I tried a new recipe for Mini Caprese Salad Bites. They turned out really well and weren't very difficult to make. Thankfully, Florence helped me hollow out the cherry tomatoes, which was the most time intensive part of the process.

There was badminton, bocce ball, croquet, a pie eating contest, s'mores, fireworks and lots of really yummy food at their party. The Happy Fun House lived up to its name once again. 

Oh yeah, and there was face painting. For probably the first time ever, I remembered to wash my face and not smear this paint all over my pillow case. That is a really good thing since we now have white sheets/pillow cases.

We intended to go to the park for the city fireworks, but were having too much fun playing with smaller fireworks in the street with our friends and didn't make it back for the big show. I came home and went straight to bed since I had to be at work early this morning. Sadly for me, everyone else in our neighborhood was just getting the party started and continued shooting fireworks (or was it bazookas??) off until almost 1:00 a.m. 

It was hard for me to remember that it was Thursday today as I kept talking about stuff we did yesterday (Wednesday) as something that happened "over the weekend". I could really get used to only working two days at a time, however!