the 4th

It is always nice to have a holiday in the middle of the week to break things up, and give us a change of pace.  Of course, having a holiday on a Thursday is kind of a bummer because you wish you had a long weekend...All that aside, we had a great day!  And it was leaps and bounds better than last year's depressing attempt at a celebration.

Joel, Odalys, and Sophia, friends from the dental school program, came for an early afternoon BBQ.  Since it was just the two families, and thrown together kind of last minute, we kept things fairly simple. Meat, meat, and more meat.  I made pretzel and toffee peanut butter brownies (yes, please) for dessert, but we were all so gutted from the meat we didn't get to them.  I sent them with Allan to school on Monday.

The men worked on the meat. . .

and Odalys worked on the mojitos. . .

 thanks to Joel for squeezing a ton of limes

Odalys

Now for my favorite thing of the day:

mojito

Since I probably haven't had a drink since my Oakland days - we can thank living in a dry community in Kenya, and then a dry country, then back to Kenya for that - one was enough for me but it was very tasty, for sure! When's the next party?

Kyalo and Sophia, who turned two in June, had a good time playing together. Bubbles, side walk chalk, the slide, etc.  They kept each other nicely entertained, with minimal fighting.

 by the end of the night, she'd chalked her whole body, including her face!  

kids!!!

eating watermelon - Kyalo probably ate half of it himself

picnic

I don't love this picture above, because everything looks disorganized and haphazard.  We weren't sure if we would eat outside - it was so hot - but when Joel showed up, the guys decided to move the picnic table under the grapevine that grows over the driveway, which gave us decent shade and kept us cool enough.  I had plans to put a tablecloth on that rundown table and get things a little bit more presentable, but everything happened so quickly, I couldn't.  I don't know how some people can make parties looks so spectacular!

After all the food was consumed we sat around and chatted for a bit, and the kids ate some ice pops I made (1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1/2 strawberries - or any fruit - 1 + TB of sugar pureed.  Throw in a mold, freeze, enjoy. EASY).

I'd say they were a hit!

Here's a funny piece of the day.  Here we were, celebrating America's birth, and the only Americans I was celebrating with were the two year olds:

Americans

This year we decided to go to the fireworks show here in Belleville, since we knew they'd wake Kyalo up anyway.  It was nice that we could just walk up the street to where they viewed.  We had a good time. Kyalo, who started out in his stroller, was again totally freaked out, but I held him for a long time, and he eventually calmed down and could enjoy the show.  He started pointing out the colors and telling us it was "nice".  

All in all, the day was so much better than last year.  It is amazing to me just how much has changed since last year, when we'd only been here a few months.  God has truly been good to us, providing so much to meet needs for us.  It hasn't been perfect, or easy, or very fun most of the time, but it has been GOOD.

And that is all we can ask for, I think.