July 4th Weekend

We spent a few days before July 4th with my parents. They were in the middle of "harvest" time for their garden and had tomatoes, okra, corn, squash, and watermelon coming out of their ears.

Please ignore the bug spray and other crazy chemicals that are in the background. My daddy is allergic to wasps so we have to keep the "killer" spray handy! I promise it wasn't used on the tomatoes!

I would say they probably had this amount of tomatoes times about 4 or more total. I brought some of them home with me and made my first batch of homemade salsa. The recipe I used came from my brother-in-law's daddy-- he's one of those cooks that just says to put a little of this and a little of that so the recipe is a bit sketchy. You just put how much you think of each ingredient. In parentheses is what I actually put in mine.

Salsa
Ingredients:
banana peppers (3)
jalapeno peppers (0)
onions (one small)
peeled tomatoes (12-14?)
apple cider vinegar (enough to cover the tomatoes in your stew pot)
sugar (1 cup)
Salt- (a good bit-- sorry!haha!)

Stew all ingredients together, adding vinegar or sugar or salt to taste. Do not add water. I canned ours in a regular water bath. :) Enjoy.


Moving on to other July 4th fun...

My parents have a post on their back porch that they measure their grandchildren's height. Here's a picture of us trying to get Audrey to cooperate..

She thought the whole process was absolutely hilarious.

You can tell she's grown quite a bit in her short little life!

We made it back home in time to celebrate the actual day of July 4th. We went to the same Freedom Festival that we went to last year and Audrey had a great time running around crazy. It was smokin' hot outside but it was perfect for a good, old-fashioned July 4th celebration.

She got to drive a firetruck! This little look on her face is her response to us asking her to smile for the camera. I really think it's the toddler version of an "eye roll". I suspect she will have that down pat by the time she is ten.

And since it was blazing hot outside, she had to have an ice cream to cool down (and a wagon ride)!

The Freedom Festival has a lot of kid friendly activities such as bouncy houses, blow up slides, and mazes. They also shoot off a ton of fireworks once the sun goes down. Little Missy wasn't feeling to keen on any of that though and she just wanted to go eat at the "cacker bell" (Cracker Barrel)-- so we did! :)

It was a fun afternoon!