happy birthday, america!

with the ILs home for a visit, it was a very happy 4th of july.  and as we often do, we hosted a BBQ at the house of wan to celebrate.

i got up early to get started on some of the goodies for the day.  first up: pureeing the watermelon to make some delicious watermelon lemonade.

i also made a batch of red velvet brownies with white chocolate frosting.  yay for finding a reason to use my red, white & blue star sprinkles!

and because i was on a red velvet roll (and it was so pretty and festive), a batch of red velvet ice cream.  i tossed in some mini chocolate chips and swirled in cream cheese ice cream.

people.  if you have an ice cream maker, i highly, HIGHLY recommend you make this stuff.  it was worth the cost of the machine alone.  oh, so good.  and gone.  so sad.

i'd made the bean a special dress for the occasion that i found on pinterest.  i'm really pleased with how it turned out, although i made the mistake of not cleaning up the leftover materials before the hub got home.  "you cut up BRAND NEW clothes to make that??"  oy vey.  he didn't make a fuss when the teen chopped up a perfectly good tee that he'd bought her at old navy only the day before.  hmph.

i took the girls to downtown glendora for their 4th of july parade.  we got there just as it started, and damn - if you blinked, you missed it.  it was mostly city officials and a bunch of old cars.  oh, well.

the bean was captivated by the equestrian team - okay, really just a handful of folks on horses.

silly faces.

and then it was over.

much later, after we grilled these and chowed down on 'em like the carnivores we are:

we piled into the car and came here:

clowned around a little:

and enjoyed these.

all in all, 'twas a very lovely independence day.  a lovely day indeed.