Happy Independence Day

Whether this is a special holiday to you, or one that you don't celebrate, I wanted to say Happy Independence Day!!!! I hope you have a great day, however you spend it. For those around the world, even though you don't celebrate it with us, we are so thankful for you and the relationships that we have with other countries.

I absolutely love this holiday and everything that it is. I really appreciate all of the freedoms we have in this country. I'm thankful for all of those who have sacrificed so that we might have and maintain these freedoms.

When I grew up, we always celebrated the 4th with fireworks as a family out in the middle of nowhere ~ my uncles would set them off, and it was always so amazing. It was always really, really fun. In my later teen and college years, we went to the larger city nearby and watched them set fireworks off over the Mississippi River. That was also very beautiful. Now, we have a town nearby we consistently go to for fireworks, and we'll be missing it this year. Every year we do the same thing, bring along a blanket and our chairs, play outside checkers while we wait, etc. My mom has come up every July 4th since we've been married (and adding my stepdad last year) but this year we had to ask her to change plans. Hopefully she can come again next year and we'll continue the tradition. It'll be hard but we're really having fun with Tim's family staying with us as we celebrated Tim's mom's 70th birthday yesterday. We have tickets to go see a local baseball team play tonight and they always have awesome fireworks afterward. So that ought to be fun. We are just praying it doesn't rain (at one time the forecast called for rain)!!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!