4th of July

The 4th of July is upon us! We had a pretty good turn out with Nana, Max, Dave, Randy, Melissa, Alicia, Randy, Gina, and Isabella. To keep with the tradition we BBQ ribs with Denise's home made BBQ sauce. We tried something different - SPECIAL NOTE! Don't Try Something Different! - and decided to try and bake the 6 rack of ribs on the BBQ grill... Let me just say that the 4 racks of ribs turned out great!

The first indication of a problem should have been the fact that with 6 racks on the grill it could BARELY maintain a 300 degree temperature. The next indication should have been the major sizzling sound emitting from the grill. But hey, the temperature thing SAID 300 degrees! Okay, after we (Denise) realized that we MIGHT just have a problem we moved 3 racks inside and I kept 3 outside. I was smart enough to realize that we probably had a problem so I kept one rack on top of the others... Those other ribs were just insulators! Then there was also the temperature gauge rocketing to 400 degrees with only the 3 racks on the grill... Hmm, so maybe you can't just pack everything in there!

Okay, so with Denise's quick reaction thinking disaster was adverted and the ribs, the ones I didn't throw in the dumpster, were AWESOME. There was also the little stint in the pressure cooker, but when all was said and done the meat was just literally falling off the bones. It was kind of odd, because I thought for moment that we were not going to have enough food for everyone... Needless to say there are leftovers of everything.

Denise also made her signature 4th of July desert which was great! More so than the ribs this is what I look forward to every year. As always it was wonderful and I ate WAY too much of it! Amazingly enough there was left overs of that as well, and I know that I had a lot of it!

The fireworks show from our front yard was good as always, though I did think that the display was not as good as last year. Then again I was playing with the camera trying to capture the show. In reviewing the pictures they look pretty good, so maybe I just wasn't paying attention. The kids were great fun to watch during this and each display brought on a "that's my favorite color". It was really cute and the best part is always seeing the kids enjoying the fireworks.

After the "fireworks incident" last year I was not allowed to purchase fireworks and our "local" display was pretty limited, however the kids did enjoy that too.

All in all it was a really great time and I know we were grateful for everyone that came over and helped make this a special day.