Fourth of July pics.

I just went back through my memory card for the first time since we got home and wow! I'm so happy I got some good shots this year.

We spend every Fourth of July weekend at Guilford Lake State Park at Todd's parents' house, with all the family. This Fourth of July was about as perfect as it gets.

The residents have a boat parade every year, where they decorate their pontoon boats. The entries were pretty good this year.


Since the parade always comes to our side of the lake last, we let the kids swim while we wait. The highlight is the pirate boat, with "real" pirates who throw candy to all the kids along shore. This is very highly anticipated by the four kids in our family.


There go the pirates!

One of them told me later that they've been doing the pirate thing for eight years. I hope they never stop...we've enjoyed it every year since we started our Fourth of July get-togethers.

I thought it would be fun to do a little holiday activity with the kids, so I baked a big sheet cake the day before, and we decorated it like a flag with berries.

I gave a tub of frosting to each pair, and a knife for each and let them go to it. (I smoothed it out a little after they were done.)

Angelo and Anna's job was the blueberries in the corner; Evelyn and Gianna took care of the raspberry stripes.


When we got it all done, I squeezed fifty "stars" onto the blueberries with a tube of white icing, while everybody counted to make sure we had the right amount (and nibbled on extra blueberries--the raspberries were deemed "too sour.")

I used a Barefoot Contessa recipe for the flag cake and it made more batter than I needed (my sheet pan was smaller than hers), so I used the leftover batter to make some cupcakes, and let each kid decorate two, with the leftover berries and some red, white, and blue sprinkles. The cake recipe was quite good--sturdy enough to hold up to all the knife-poking as the kids frosted it, but tasty as well. I cheated and used canned Betty Crocker icing--my Contessa-hood only goes so far, especially on vacation.

What a bunch of fun that was! And the clean-up wasn't bad at all.

More later.