Happy 4th to All! This my favorite holiday and also the day my mother died, so I am going to set aside all things political along with any negative thoughts that try to take hold in my brain and enjoy the day. Time to reflect, think about my mom and live in the moment. One of the local churches has a pie sale on the 4th. Those church ladies make wonderful pies and I always get there too late to get a slice of pecan pie. This morning I got up early, walked down to the church and was one of the first in line. They only had half a pecan pie left, but I got my slice and, my oh my, was it ever good! After that, I walked over to the local pub and had one of their famous bloody marys. Wasnt much later and it was time to watch the parade. Hubby and I are now resting/relaxing. In a bit we are going to bbq some burgers. What a great day it's been! From last year's parade:

I'm just getting ready to hand-sew the binding to the back of this Eiffel Tower Panel quilt that I'm doing for a friend. I've been feverishly trying to get it done and sent. Other than that we are staying home, DH will light up the grill and smoke some sockeye salmon, roast some corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, and grill some broccoli and mushrooms with lemon. Yum! Larri, I absolutely LOVE Greek food, especially stuffed grape leaves, can I come, too? DH isn't as crazy about it, he'll eat it but never asks for it, so I'll leave him home. I do make some dishes occasionally - especially Greek salad and simple broiled lemon chicken breast. We have a very small franchise here that does the gyros, salads, rice bowls and they make this awesome side - feta fries - they are just too good to describe.

We always had them when we were kids. Supervised of course, but with Reservation shops in all 4 directions, the only thing limiting what could be bought was the budget. It's been a lot of years since we've done much with fireworks ourselves. Our city would have a display (not this year) that we didn't even have to go out for, we could view it from above and across the river at the living room windows. Current city restrictions are 9 AM until midnight today only for igniting any kind of fireworks and all the 'good stuff' is banned now. I've been hearing fireworks noises for the last three days though, and off and on all day today.

@Sueb20 what books are you reading? Any good? I just had a week at the beach and came home Saturday morning. D17 was able to come for a few days then went home with Dh midweek to work, and Dh had an unavoidable/unexpected business meeting in Atlanta. My sons both had to work so it ended up being a vacation mostly for myself! It was actually quite nice. The weather was absolutely perfect. Nothing exciting planned today. Another beautiful day. I was up early and took one of my dogs for a long walk. Dh is smoking a pork butt so we will have pulled pork, corn on cob and potato salad for dinner, We can walk to the end of our block to see the city fireworks tonight out over the bay. D23 flew from her home in San Diego to a wedding outside of Denver over the weekend. No line at security in SD and no flight issues on the way to Denver. They fly back to SD tonight so fingers crossed they have no problems getting home.