Sis...Boom...Bah!

We had an early 4th of July celebration this year ( if that is possible ). We had the pleasure of having Julie, Cameron, and Olivia Brown over on the 2nd for dinner while they were in-town from Virginia. They are such good friends and we love their company, so we were really excited to have them over. I made homemade hamburger buns for the first time and they turned out pretty good. We had bacon cheese stuffed hamburgers, homemade salsa ( Julie's famous recipe ), grilled corn, fresh berries, thyme lemonade, and homemade vanilla ice-cream with raspberry sherbet and blueberries for dessert. It was soooo good! I made cute little place markers, paper cones for everyones chips, and 4th of July ribbon wands for the girls to play with. I was hoping we were going to eat outside, but the weather did not quite cooperate. Some how I forgot to take pictures of the food. Oh well. We all had fun talking and watching the girls play. We are always left wishing the Browns lived closer when they come to visit.






The next day we had Ryan's parents over while they were in-town. It was fun, we got to show them the new house and hang out all day. Ryan and his Dad and brother replaced and fixed all the main sprinkler valves, and I think it only took 3 trips to the hardware store. Jayna had fun playing in the yard with her "Maga", and she even got a big girl rack to play with, so she can help us in the yard. That night Summer and her family also came down and we had pizza and hung out. I only got this picture out of all of it though. I need to be better at remembering to take pictures.



Then on the 4th we woke up and went to the farmers market down-town. It is my favorite thing to do during the summer. I love seeing all the fresh produce and it is fun to have breakfast there as a family, except for the breakfast stands I always pick take forever to get you your food. We spent most the morning there and got green-beans for our dinner. Then we just took it easy for the afternoon. That night we had Marshall over and we had a great dinner. We had tri-tip, spinach and strawberry salad, garlic bacon green-beans, and pesto bow-tie pasta. It was the best dinner ever. We ate outside and the weather was perfect. It was a dream come true for me! Beautiful family, beautiful house, beautiful food, beautiful country. It was a full circle moment for me (not to be too dramatic or anything). So we enjoyed our dinner, played with sparklers, and waited for it to get dark. Marshall bless his soul, bought this huge box of fireworks. He originally wanted to buy a bunch of illegal fireworks and take them out to the salt flats, but since he does not have a wife I had to step in and be the voice of reason. So are compromise was that he could buy as many legal fireworks as he wanted and set them off in the court. The boys had fun burning their money and Jayna and I had fun watching them. We had leftover homemade ice-cream, and roasted marshmallows on the hot coals in the BBQ. It was a long three days of entertaining, but it was fun and what I live for.