when your birthday is on the 4th of July

You always get your very own fireworks.

Our friends came over to help us celebrate on Saturday.
I might have gotten a little carried away with the decorating and preparations.
But it's a big day, right? A birthday for both my sweet husband and our beautiful country!
I made these pendant banners out of fabric I found 5 yds for $5 at Walmart, an old pair of jeans that I had already sliced into for another project, a string, and red paper stars. Easy, cheap, and so fun to make!

We tried to semi-duplicate the meal we made at the beach house: spicy grilled chicken wings, grilled pineapple (sprinkled with brown sugar), macaroni salad, french fries, watermelon, green salad, corn on the cob, and croissants.

I'm not sure how it stood up to the gooey goodness at the beach, but
it was quite good. Everyone ate in silence, which is generally a good sign.

After dinner we drove out to the hill country to where they sell the fireworks. They had a big grassy field out there that you could go to light off your fireworks.

Sitting out there, with the warm summer night, a soft cool breeze, my baby falling asleep in my lap (yes, falling asleep with the fireworks all around!), watching Kent help light off the fireworks he's been dying to use since we bought them three summers ago,well, it was a night where I liked Texas.
Maybe a little.
Maybe more than a little.

(You can't do big mortar-in the air-fireworks in Utah.)

We came back here after the fireworks for cake and ice cream.

For the birthday boy I baked a cake.
It was really, really good. Red velvet, white cake, white cake dyed blue, and cream cheese frosting.


And now, the most awesome birthday present.
As you know, Kent already opened his big present of the year (the projector), and so although I didn't want to get him anything big,
I wanted to find something special for him.

If you know Kent, you know something about him. He likes root beer.
He really likes root beer.So I gave him an entire cooler full of 12 different brands of gourmet root beer and included a sheet I made with rules and criterion for him to judge each root beer.
The idea is for him to figure out which brands he likes best and why.

I got the idea from this blog post.

I knew he would like the cooler full of root beer, but I wasn't sure if he would actually go for the whole "five stars judging system" idea.
I'm happy to see that he thinks it's awesome. We both sat down today after church and taste tested a few of the brands. (For the record, you shouldn't try BundAberg. Bleh!)

Happy, happy 25th birthday, my Love! I'm glad you were born!