This 4th would be different this year.
No husbands. No boyfriends, No kids.

Just middle aged moms enjoying time together.

Things that are important to these Moms:

• food
• giving our time to charity
• friendships
• church
• cooking
• food
• talking and sharing with friends
• celebrating
• food
• time with friends
• exercise

We managed to fit all of this into our day….

With this in mind, we made our plans for the day to celebrate America’s Birthday.

We made a lemon cake and a healthy spinach salad to take to our evening party. We licked the bowl of the cream cheese frosting….oh, and the beaters, too!

We took a short walk then headed over to my friends church’s firework stand where we gave our time to chat with others…I mean we spent our time selling fireworks!

We packed a picnic lunch and headed over to the Pleasanton’s 13th Annual Community Fourth of July Celebration.

We spent the next two hours being entertained by Uncle Sam, the Community band, a poem reading, drummers and a Civil War commemoration.

When was the last time you sang “America the Beautiful” or Star-Spangled Banner”?

or said the pledge of Allegiance?

Listening to the Young American Patriots Drum and Fife Corps made me think about my kids when they were young. Sissy leading her Junior High band as drum major. College Boy playing his trumpet. Ahhhhh memories!

I convinced my girlfriends to indulge in an American favorite…ice cream! After all we were having a birthday celebration.

A trip back to Mrs A’s to pick up our food and then off to another friend’s 4th of July party.

Kids in the pool…don’t need to worry.
Kids on the jumping gym…don’t need to worry.
Volleyball.
Fireworks…don’t need to worry.
Too much food….don’t need to worry.

Yep! When it is just you and your girlfriends you get to go to the celebration without worrying if your kids will drown in the pool, hurt themselves in the bounce house, burn themselves on fireworks or eat too much and get a tummy ache.

The only one eating too much this day is little ‘ole ME!

All we needed to worry about is visiting with friends and getting a piece of that lemon cake we made with love.

Yep…life isn’t too bad as an empty nest middle aged mom!

In memory of Mrs. T, I had one deviled egg.

Reminisce with me as I listen to the songs I so proudly sang in grade school…

The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Yankee Doodle…I always liked this song when I was young. I think there was some hand motions we made up to go with the song.

Do they sing these songs in school now…as much as we did?
Do our kids really understand how lucky we are to live in a free country and to call America home?

Of course 4th of July always includes fireworks! This year I tried to take some pictures with the help of a 6th grade girl who befriended me. She gave me advice like to turn the flash off. Her way of hinting that I needed to turn the flash off, “The light is hurting my retina!” Haa Haa “I told her I was an amateur.” She said, “Let me see your camera. I will play around with it so you can turn the flash off.” Well, I got the hint to turn the flash off (quite frankly I was so amazed with all the fireworks that I didn’t realize it was on. Woops!) She then preceded to tell me, “Keep clicking, keep clicking, keep clicking. Click fast!” Sooooo I did as any middle aged mom would do and listen to a preteen. I clicked and I clicked and I clicked and before you knew it the fireworks were over. Thanks to my new friend, I think I got some pretty good pictures of the fireworks. What do you think?

God Bless America! Happy Birthday!