4th of July

We hosted the 4th of July get-together for Jonathan's family this year. That makes it sound so...impressive. Our hosting duties consisted of making food for 3 extra people and hosting the meal at our house. :-)

Uncle Kenny in his patriotic shirt

The menu: grilled chicken, chimichurri sauce, grilled red cabbage, grilled shrimp, Indian potato salad, strawberry jello (made almost entirely by Toby), chocolate pie, and strawberry swirl. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the food. Maybe next time.

Abbie loved the chocolate pie!

We had lots of fun playing hosts! I have a very clear memory of feeling overwhelmed about holidays several years ago when Toby and Abbie were quite small. I think it was during one of our first holidays on our own in Indonesia. Seems funny now, but the weight of responsibility to make holidays special for our children seemed so heavy at the time. It was so much work to make special foods, plan special activities, do extra shopping, etc., to give our children a fun Christmas, and suddenly it made sense to me why my mom never seemed quite as excited about holidays as I was. :-) But on this holiday, it was just fun! The kids played happily together while Jonathan and I worked together in the kitchen. Toby enjoyed putting together the jello (I poured the hot water and cut up the strawberries, of course). Getting together with family was fun and special, too.

Anyway, it was really encouraging to see how much fun it could be to do holidays--even if I'm the mom now and I have to do a lot of the work to make the day special. It's nice to see evidence that maybe I'm growing into this "Mom" role. :-) And, obviously, spending the day in the US with family reduces the stress and increases the "fun factor" by quite a lot.

Most of my pictures from the day were taken during the watermelon feast. All 3 of my kids love watermelon, apparently!

Watermelon beard

Grammy gave Benjamin his first taste of watermelon, and he just couldn't get enough!