4th of July Weekend - Part One - Friday through Saturday

Yes, I am aware that it is Thursday and I am just now returning to update from the past weekend. Things were crazy over the weekend and we have been desperately trying to get things back to normal since Tuesday night when all of the company finally left. And becuase the weekend was so eventful, I will post in 2 separate posts.

So, I guess that I will start with Friday night. Most of our company arrived Friday night. Maggie was down from Columbia. (We have pretty much adopted her into our family) Kris, Mandy (cousin) and their three kids were in from Colorado Springs. Chris (brother), Doris and two of their boys were in from Whiteman AFB. My mother had taken off Friday and made dinner for all of us. It was a great dinner. It was similar to a thanksgiving dinner with no turkey. We had ham and all sorts of veggies, many fresh ones from the garden. After dinner we sat around and talked. We also started getting things together for Saturday.

Saturday, we were up early for a big day. We finished gettings things ready for the day and loaded up the cars. Yes, cars. We had stuff piled in 4 vehicles, I think. Chris, Maggie and I had a few errands to run before leaving town, but was on the road before 11. The entire family headed to Mountain Home. This is where my parents and I usually go on the 4th. My dad's aunt lives there. We usually have good food all day and enjoy the company of family. This year we just had about 20 additional people. We had a great lunch of brisket, ribs, corn, salad and tons of fresh veggies. It was a great lunch. To make things even better, we had homemade ice cream for dessert. After lunch we went down to the lake. Uncle Terry got out the boat. We had to take turns on the boat. The rest of us just went swimming.

We got off of the lake around 4:00 p.m. Chris, Maggie and I decided that we didn't want to wait another 5 hours to see fireworks, so we headed back to Missouri. We showered off the lake water and played with the pups for a while. Turns out, everyone got wore out on the lake and everyone came back before seeing the fireworks. We had dinner together. Even the leftovers of that meal were great. We then headed to the store for us to get groceries needed for our baking for the next family get together. Once we got back, Maggie and I got started on preparation. We made up the meatballs (just didn't bake them) and made our strawberry jello cake so it would set over night. We crashed after that. It was an exhausting day.