A Great Fourth of July….

It’s late and I’m tired but I would be lax if I didn’t take time out right now to thank my Heavenly Father for this great country we live in. Sunday morning was a beautiful morning filled with clear blue skies and lots of heat. The morning church services were patriotic and very uplifting. Then last night TF, Elaine and I went up to the Woodlands (Cynthia Mitchell Pavilion ) to watch the Fourth of July Concert put on by the Houston Symphony. We left early so that we could get some good seats up on the hill. We parked and made our way up to a great spot, right in front, about 15 feet up on the hill. We spread our blanket and sat down on the ground to wait till show time. We watched people come in and we waved at a few friends as they made their way up the hill. Promptly at 8:00pm. the concert started. There was a good mix of music: The Washington Post march, Old Fashioned Summer tunes, Pops Hoedown, Home on the Range, (yea) Yellow Rose of Texas, march from Midway, This is My Country, From Sea to shining Sea, When Rock was Young, Service Man Medley, God Bless America, Stars and Stripes Forever and a newly composed piece called American Celebration. A man named Hayman Runyan played the Harmonica in a way you couldn’t believe. What a talented man. When they did the Service Man Medley, they played the tunes that went with each branch of the service. If you were a member of that service you were asked to stand up and everyone in the audience clapped and cheered. It was awesome. The concert lasted for two hours and it was great. I am so glad that we got to go. I love going to those kinds of concerts, especially on the Fourth of July.

This morning I was up early so that I could take Bonnie to the airport for a 9:00am. flight. We got out the door in plenty of time, but as we reached the airport Bonnie realized that she did not have her wallet. It had fallen out of her purse, in her car, the night before. She panicked realizing that her plane would leave in one hour. Would we have time to go back and get her wallet? Luckily we used our brains and called TF and had him drive it up to the airport for her. He got there within 30 minutes and she checked in and boarded her flight. Whoa! already a crazy morning. On the way home we stopped off at the church for the Fourth of July breakfast. We got there just in time to eat. We missed the flag ceremony, but there was plenty of food and fun for everyone. After that I headed to Krogers to pick up the day old bread for our Bishops Storehouse. (The Bishops Storehouse is like a food pantry for members of our church.) They had four baskets full of bread, cakes, pies, muffins, and Etc. I hauled it down to the storehouse and unloaded. By the time I got home it was already 11:00am. I had planned a big dinner for this evening and I needed to start cleaning up a little and get to work on the potato salad and cold slaw. By 3:00pm. the chicken and sausage were in the oven and by 6:00pm. friends and family showed up for the feast. Baked beans and French bread rounded out the meal. It was awesome. We all had a great time eating and conversing. All yes, pie for desert.
I cleaned up the kitchen and now here I am relaxing and telling you all about it. Jennifer’s baby is due in 20 days and she looks like she is going to pop already. Roxie is about to have her puppies any day now. Life is teaming!

Isn’t this what the Fourth of July is all about? Isn’t this one of the ways we pursue happiness? Aren’t the freedoms we have in our country wonderful? We really do have a wonderful country. I am so grateful for our Constitution and the freedoms it affords us. Are we working to preserve those freedoms? Do we write or call our Congressmen and women when we feel that our freedoms are being compromised? We need to do more to make sure that our freedoms will be preserved for generations to come. We don’t want them whittled away by “big” government. As we go about another year, let’s all study the words of the Constitution and gain a testimony of it’s importance to the survival of our land and our way of life.

I hope you all had a great Fourth.