July Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth!

Sittin' on the dock of a bay.... oh, hi! Sorry I haven't written in a while, but (1) I've been out of town, and (2) I wanted to leave my essay, "Blocked," up for a few days. Looks like it received over 400 hits! Thanks to everyone who read it here, or at the Santa Fe Writers Project's Journal. And especially to everyone who left comments.

So... about the weekend. I've been busy today writing another article for First Things (at their invitation, which is exciting) so I'm mainly going to share photos from my weekend today.

Let's start with the actual holiday: The Fourth of July! We had a great time at the cookout at Claire and Ethan's, although Ethan got stuck at work (out of town) and couldn't join us. But Father Basil helped Claire with the grill...

Their back yard is huge, shady and fun for soccer ... or other pursuits

It was great to visit with Stacy, who is home from Africa for a few weeks this summer!

Folks arrived with food for the grill, children, games and music...

So, that was the Fourth.... on the Fifth I took off for Little Rock with my daughter, Beth... for a visit at my friend, Daphne's, mother's house on Lake Norell.

The rain on Saturday didn't discourage us from cooking chickens on the grill... here's Granny teaching Ian how to carve them up for us.

After the rain slowed down, we gathered next door at Daphne's sister's place for a party...

Here's Dee setting the table...

and as the rained stopped, the "Fourth of July Lake Norell Boat Parade" began...

Here's one of my favorites, with the Mexican theme!

And this guy was hilarious...

A few more...

hey--who's this ?

Ian ended up giving rides in the boat to the center of the lake for a better view of the fireworks later:

We had a view from the dock...

which got crowded as the night progressed!

The fireworks were hard to capture on camera, so I'll leave them to your imagination!

We decided to stay over until Monday for The Sixth! and were so glad we did as the sun came out on the lake.

and the swimming was lovely!

We even swam "across the big lake" at sunset... and enjoyed the remains of the day on the lake.

Thanks for a great time, Betty, Daphne, Hallie, Will, Simon, Ian, Dee and Bruce!

We'll be back!