The 4th recap

Once again, I failed to post over the weekend due to busyness, so you'll have to be satisfied with a small glimpse into what kept us busy this weekend.

I picked David up on Friday from his week at camp.  He had a great time, but it sure was nice to have my favorite son back at home with us.  He got home just in time to rejoin his baseball team in their tournament quest for gold.  They ended up 3rd place overall.  David was thrilled to get his first ever trophy.

I had a big case of "summer stomach" this weekend.  Here is what our supper ended up being on Saturday: salad, green beans, snap peas, kohlrabis, beets, lemon-buttered turnips, and a hard boiled egg.  All of this was fresh from the garden, with the exception of the eggs, but they came from my friend Kim's chickens so it went with the theme.  I apologized to Aaron for him not realizing that he married a mostly vegetarian before it was too late. 

Don't worry though, we made up for all those vegetables by having a large bowl of ice cream for everyone after supper.  That made smiles all around.

Yesterday, we happily celebrated the 4th here in town.  Abby really wanted to go and watch the Kiddie Parade downtown this year.  It starts a half hour before the real parade starts that goes right by our house.  I off-handedly mentioned that they could be in the kiddie parade if they wanted, and so the girls got very excited about that idea.  They scurried about and in 15 minutes we had put together a quick decoration of the wagon and they were off to quickly register just in time for the parade.

The plan was that Ana would pull Abby in the wagon during the parade.  However, Abby felt very scared to ride in the wagon and have Ana pull her.  Here she is feeling insecure.

But after lots of reassurance from Ana and me that Ana would be very careful, she was okay with the idea.  Here they are setting off on their tiny little route.  They happily waved to everyone as they passed by.

They turned out being very happy with their last minute decision to be in the parade since they each got a little goodie bag filled with candy (just what we needed), a gold dollar, and a free skate pass.

After that, they hurried home to gather more candy from the main parade.  We had a hot dog roast with all the friends who gathered in our yard to watch the parade.  Abby and I then took a nice long nap in the afternoon since we were both tired and would be staying up late to watch the fireworks. 

At firework time, we went to a friend's house who has a great view of the fireworks without the massive crowd (massive for us small town folk).  The kids enjoyed playing with sparklers while they waited for the show to begin.  Well, they had fun until the very end when Ana, who was sprinting around with her sparkler, wiped out on the gravel parking lot and cut up her elbow and knee and burnt her fingers in the process of falling.  She was one very sad little girl.  She gets really upset at the sight of blood, and unfortunately these cuts bled a lot.  I ended up running home to get some bandages to stop the bleeding and grabbed her favorite stuffed kitty while I was there to help bring some comfort. Thankfully, the fireworks started soon and that helped take her mind off her throbbing fingers, knees and elbow. The show lasted longer than usual, so it was about 10:45 before kids got to bed last night.  Thankfully, Abby had her nap, so she was a very chipper little girl the entire time.

So that was our celebration of the weekend. Did you do anything special or fun or out of the ordinary?  Also, do have ideas on ways to prepare turnips for me?  I got a packet of seeds to try out this year and I am having a bumper crop of turnips.  So far we have done them raw (David prefers them this way) and then with a lemon-butter glaze (the girls prefer them this way).  I have another couple of recipes to try out, but am always looking for ideas and inspiration!