4th of July

We had a pretty calm 4th of July. It was unusually dry and warm for July and we enjoyed not grilling in the rain. We decided to stay home and watch the fireworks in our neighborhood and then be able to put the kids in bed not too late. We barbequed spare ribs and Kateri and I made strawberry cream cake. Its from a recipe in Cooks Illustrated. It is very tasty and I made it, I think four times last summer. It was just as tasty this year and we finished it off the next night when Tirzah and Aaron come over for dinner. Now we are all out so I'll have to make a new one soon.

The kids allenjoyed the fireworks. Shane let Cyril light off his own tanks and a few other ones. Cyril thought it was pretty cool. Cyprian wanted to catch every firework. Shane started off with some parachuters so he expected every "bew bew" to have something and after every bang he would try to go running in to the street frantically calling "catch it, catch it". He picked up a used Roman Candle and thought he was responsiblile for the cascades of sparks flying everywhere. It was hard to corrall him but finally he settled down and eventually went to sleep in my arms. We came in and had cake and put the kids to bed and finished watching Blackhawk Down. Which made me want to light off a few of my own fireworks aimed at some political "leaders" and some not so civilized groups. But I settled down enough- and eventually so did the fireworks- to get to sleep.

Audrey got to spend the 4th in Grangeville, ID with her cousins. They had a parade and Audrey got to wear her great-grandmothers dress. I'll put pictures of that up later.

We are still having very warm weather. The ferry is running over to Jetty Island so maybe the rest of us will accompany Shane and Cyril on a kiteboarding expedition one of these days.