Happy 4th of July!

4th of July Cupcake toppers

My new thing these days is to make cupcake toppers.. here are some that I made for 4th of July.

July 4th

This year for July 4th Tim work (like he does for most of them) so Zach and I decided to invite Nolan, Kaylee and Sandra to go to the movies with us to see Brave.  It was a cute movie and the boys enjoyed getting to see each other.  Sandra and I enjoyed getting to see each other too and of coarse to see Ms. Kaylee!

When we got home Tim was there so we ate dinner and waited for 7:30 to come so we could go and see some fireworks.  My work offers the employees a chance to see them up close and personnal on top of the tower garage.  The Woodlands has a hugh firework display so Zach was excited to find out we were going to be on top of them.  So we got there and some employees were already there.  We found a great spot and sat and waited.  Let me say we were not disappointed! 

Happy Birthday America!

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July!  We are hanging out at the house today.  Tim smoked us some ribs so we will be eating them for supper tonight (I can't wait!  He makes the best! - Thanks Deachi for introducing us to Head Country Rub so many years ago!  We are still buying it by the pickle jar size!)  So we will be eating that tonight watching the fireworks on TV... 

So why do we celebrate this day?  It was surprising to me to hear that some Americans don't even know who we fought against to become our own country so looking around the internet I found this poem and thought that it explained the holiday well.

Why Do We Celebrate the 4th of July?

By: Kim Moon

Most people in the United States celebrate the 4th of July, but do you know exactly why the holiday is so important to our country? Imagine how you would feel if someone older than you (maybe an older sister or brother) kept telling you what to do all of the time and kept taking more and more of your allowance. That is how the colonists felt in the years leading up to 1776. Great Britain kept trying to make the colonists follow more rules and pay higher taxes. People started getting mad and began making plans to be able to make their own rules. They no longer wanted Great Britain to be able to tell them what to do, so they decided to tell Great Britain that they were becoming an independent country. (To be independent means to take care of yourself, making your own rules and providing for your own needs.)

The Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and they appointed a committee (a group of people working together to do a specific job) to write a formal document that would tell Great Britain that the Americans had decided to govern themselves. The committee asked Thomas Jefferson to write a draft (first try) of the document, so he worked for days, in absolute secret, until he had written a document that he thought said everything important that the committee had discussed. On June 28, 1776, the committee met to read Jefferson's "fair" copy (he put his best ideas together and wrote them neatly.) They revised (made some changes) the document and declared their independence on July 2, 1776. They officially adopted it (made it theirs) on July 4, 1776. That is why we call it "Independence Day." Congress ordered that all members must sign the Declaration of Independence and they all began signing the "official" copy on August 2, 1776. In January of the next year, Congress sent signed copies to all of the states.

The Declaration of Independence is more than just a piece of paper. It is a symbol of our country's independence and commitment to certain ideas. A symbol is something that stands for something else. Most people can look at a certain little "swoosh" and know that it stands for "Nike." Well, the signers of the Declaration of Independence wanted the citizens of the United States to have a document that spelled out what was important to our leaders and citizens. They wanted us to be able to look at the Declaration of Independence and immediately think of the goals we should always be working for, and about the people who have fought so hard to make these ideas possible. The people who signed the Declaration risked being hanged for treason by the leaders in Great Britain. They had to be very brave to sign something that would be considered a crime! So every time we look at the Declaration of Independence, we should think about all of the effort and ideas that went into the document, and about the courage it took for these people to stand up for what they knew was right -- independence!

I apprecicate all that the colonist did back then and what all the soldiers in the past, present and the future will do (have done) for us! 

Happy Birthday America!

Happy 4th the celebration...

We decided to take Zach to The Woodlands to see fireworks.  It was great we watched from the park by the pavilion it was a great place to watch.  There were many big colorful ones to look at.  I took my camera and played around with the settings to try to get some good pictures.. check these out..

Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Happy 4th of July!