Fourth of July Pictures!

Usually I remember holidays the day before... this one I remembered the morning of! Oh, crumbs! I was supposed to plan for this!

Thankfully, my forgetfulness was easily remedied, and we had a great day. Highlights included....

A Fruit Flag! (Strawberries, blueberries, marshmallows.) Yum. (You can make it healthier with bananas instead of marshmallows, but then you need to eat it within three seconds before it looks crummy.)

That's right, those are lessons in the background. Home education is never more than six inches away from me. 

Dinner was sticky-sweet drumsticks, baked beans, our fruit flag, and..... patriotic gelatin desserts! They were so fun to make!

How to make: Jello on the bottom, tilted while it jells. I used all-natural jello to avoid the Red 40, and an added bonus was the fact that because it was vegan, it chilled much faster than traditional jello! Then panna cotta on top, plus blueberries for topping. This is an adaptation and simplification of Martha Stewart's original recipe for Red, White, and Blue Parfaits (sorry, no time to make homemade currant gelatin from fresh currants).

We did our traditional reading of the Declaration of Independence (to see why, read this post), and then finished up with a water balloon fight.

I occasionally get a really good picture... this is one of them! Oh wait, I didn't take this picture - DH did. And that's why it turned out well! 

Afterwards we went in to watch snippets of the Capitol Fourth show... but, come to think of it, I believe we ran out of time for that this year. Instead, we headed outside for fireworks (the local show is just a few blocks from our house) and then our own sparklers.

We had a great - and very, very, very busy - Fourth of July! How did you all celebrate?