Our Fabulous Fourth

The Fourth of July!

A wonderful day to celebrate this great country of ours.

A great day to get together with friends or family, maybe have a barbecue, and watch some fireworks.

also, a day off of work.

I'll be honest with you now...

I am a pretty lazy person at heart.

I am happy to be invited to someone else's barbecue (yes, I'll bring a side dish or dessert)
 and then to sit in their backyard and chat the day away.

I don't mind lounging in a hammock or on a picnic blanket for as long as you'll let me stay.
Movie afterwards? yes, please.

But this year, Frank and I were kind of excited about having this extra day off of work to get some things done that we've been wanting to do.
I mean, we did chuck the to-do list on Saturday, but it was still there, waiting for us.

And so we had a different kind of Fourth of July this year.

First, we went and picked raspberries at a friend's house

(Thanks Monica and Mark!)

This was an unexpected thing we added to our day because it turns out that shameless begging for berries on Facebook actually works sometimes.

Having all those fresh berries got me thinking that I should make jam asap.

I know, right?

I didn't put it off.

I'm so impressed with myself.

My grandma always had raspberry freezer jam and it was my absolute favorite thing.

So I thought about her today as I made 11 jars of jam as soon as we got home from picking.

I also froze a bunch of berries for future raspberry crisp!

In the meantime, Frank set up our first rain barrel.

We are both kind of excited to have rain barrels.
We are dorks like that.

I then tackled the much delayed job of canning 36 pints of chicken.

I bought the chicken some time ago when there was an amazing sale that my perfect sister told me about.

She, of course, dealt with hers immediately.

I threw the whole 40 lb box in the freezer and said I'd think about it later.

When I told her I'd done that she had a good laugh since I was going to have a big 40 lb block to unthaw...

I did finally put it in the refrigerator to thaw (which took about a week!), so I could not put off this task anymore.

As I canned chicken, Frank mowed the lawn and trimmed some trees and worked on the car a bit.

Then we had a little barbecue, just the two of us.

Followed by relaxing and reading on the lovely, temporarily bug-free, outdoor couch.

Frank is just not a guy that sits around.

He always has a project going on or chores that he's doing.

So, for him, this was probably a perfect Fourth of July.

I did enjoy getting so much done, for sure!

(though the bathrooms still need doing, there's a load of laundry getting wrinkled in the dryer, and my kitchen looks like a bomb went off even though I've done dishes TWICE already today...so there's certainly more I could do)

But, honestly, I would have been nearly as happy to sit on my sister's back porch and gab...

but that's just me.

And the chicken would still have been waiting for me, which would have been a bummer.
So its probably for the best that my siblings all had other plans already and I couldn't invite myself over.

I don't want to sound like I didn't enjoy today.
I totally did!
But I tend to say things like "we are project people" which makes me sound so darn active,
when the real truth is more like "Frank is a project person and I sometimes do things too"

Today, for example.
I don't think I saw Frank sit down once.
I, being the anxiety ridden canner that I am, had to babysit the canner as my chicken cooked.
Which meant that I had 75 minutes while it was processing that I just sat on the lovely, temporarily bug-free, outdoor couch and watched "Call the Midwives" on Netflix while watching and listening to my canner at the same time.
and Frank mowed and trimmed and pulled weeds right in front of me...occasionally sending me a nice smile as he went by...not once did I feel the urge to help him.
Ok, once I remember a twinge of guilty urge, but it passed.
I had to watch the canner after all!
And, well, I'm kinda lazy too.

We finished the awesome day by going out with Ryan for ice cream and then to a nearby park
(where we went last year with Branden, Amber and the girls...sniff, sniff)
to watch fireworks.

Then we drove around a little bit and ended up finding a couple of great spots to watch fireworks happening all through the valley.  

It was great!

A pretty nice Fourth of July if I do say so myself.

And I am 11 jars of jam, 36 jars of chicken, a mowed lawn, trimmed trees, and a water barrel richer for it!