4th of July

Like I said in the previous post, we headed up to the lake cabin for a cool, stormy 4th of July. Miles and I began the celebration by making a birthday cake for America. It began when I was trying to explain the flag and 4th of July to him a few days prior. I told him that the 4th of July was America's birthday. He insisted that a birthday required a cake.

So this is what we made:

After a few mishaps and pregnancy brain moments, it turned out pretty well. The cream cheese frosting was delish! I originally thought we could put the blueberries in any corner, then turn the cake to make them in the correct corner...not so! We ended up having to move all the blueberries. Also, if you look at the second to last row of frosting, you'll see a break in the white stripe. That is because Miles was helping put the strawberries on, slipped, and put his hand through the cake! Woops! It turned out ok and tasted just fine. I think we may make this a yearly tradition. Miles enjoyed cracking eggs, mixing, pouring, baking, etc.


Later that day, after much procrastination on our parts because no one really wanted to go down to the water in the 55 degree overcast weather, we finally took Miles down to the lake to "go fishing". He was being a silly goose while he waited!

Here, he is putting an antler on Grandma Sara.

And then himself.

We finally put our coats on and headed down to the dock. If you look closely in this picture, you'll see that Miles is losing his pants... Him and his skinny little bum!

We sat on the dock for a few minutes and fished with floppy. Miles insisted on taking his shoes off to dip his feet in the lake. He quickly decided that it was just too cold for that!

So we played on the shore.

Built some rocky sand castles, poured water from the bucket, and managed to stay relatively dry.

Later that evening, Ben and I built a fire in the fire pit. I roasted marshmallows and made some yummy s'mores. Before long, the blue sky turned gray and started to sprinkle. The sprinkle gradually got stronger and stronger and we finally bailed before the real storm started. Minutes after going inside, it began to pour! Not only that, but it hailed pea sized hail.

It quickly put our fire out.

See the hail in that planter? Crazy July weather!

Around 9pm that night, us "adult" children went down to the shore and had a fireworks show. I didn't take pictures this year. It was pretty great and we managed to finish before the rain started again. We also had quite the crowd of spectators this year!

The next morning, Ben and I slept in while Grandma Sara watched Miles and Grandpa Tom went fishing. After rousing, we ate a great pancake breakfast, packed up, and hit the road. Miles (who remained napless the day before and didn't sleep great due to the ongoing fireworks), was plum tuckered!

Despite the weather, it was a great 4th of July!