Fourth of July 2012

 It is a little strange posting about the 4th of July when I am currently getting ready for Christmas, but I am still doing my best to catch up on this here blog.  One of my favorite traditions that our family does is our annual Fourth of July pancake breakfast.

 Warning: tons of pictures!

 Drink station

 I attempted to make fireworks for about our buffet.

 The kids loved eating the gumballs form our centerpiece as we were doing the races.

 Fruit kabobs.

 Our pancake cookers.

 I saw this idea on pinterest to attach the silverware and napkins to the plates with ribbon.  I thought it was such a good idea!  Just punch some holes in the plates and tie a ribbon through and around your silverware bundle.

 Our tradition is to do races after breakfast.  This tradition comes from when I was growing up.  The ward that we were in always did a 4th of July breakfast and races and I loved it, so I wanted to carry on the tradition with my own kids and family.

 Josh always makes up the craziest obstacle courses.  I think they are the highlight of the races.

 McKay even got into the spirit of things.

 No 4th of July race would be complete without gunny sack races!

 My parents even raced this year.  That was a definite highlight!

 The older "kids" always do a couple races as well.

 My brother Steve attempted the races with Palmer on his back... :)

 This is serious business.

 Three legged races.

 After the races are over we always decorate bikes and then have a parade (just like I did when I was young).

 All ready for the parade.

 And they are off.

 Palmer is so cute with babies.  He is always wanting to hold them.  I love that about him.

 My brother Mark's birthday is on the 5th of July so we celebrated it with singing and cake.

It was such a fun year.

Here are some links for the pancake breakfasts from the past 2 years.
2010
2011

Boston Day 3

 Our day 3 of Boston was so much fun.  We slept in (which rarely happens for us...on vacation this past week with our kids we woke up bright and early every day), which was lovely and then headed over to The Taj for afternoon tea. First we stopped over to the Public Garden and took a lovely walk around.

 It is so amazing how old everything is here.  I am a huge history lover and I just felt chills over all of the history of this city.

 We strolled around Boston Commons as well (which is across the way from the Public Garden and also beautiful).  Boston Common has so much history and meaning for the city of Boston.

 I just loved all of the surroundings.

 Boston really was all that I hoped it would be.  I loved ever millisecond of this city.

 These flowers reminded me of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. 

 Then we headed to tea.  Josh is so amazing for planning this for me.  I was beyond in heaven.  Everything was so lovely and elegant.

 I wished we had dressed up, but it wasn't very practical since we weren't going back to the hotel so we did the best we could.  I have wanted to go to a traditional English tea forever and was thrilled it was finally happening.  Josh wasn't as thrilled that one of those tea sandwiches had caviar on it...

 We each had our own pot of tea (herbal berry tea) on a warmer.  Pardon this for all of you who have done this before, it was new and exciting to Josh and me :)

 Every detail was just lovely.

 The sandwich on the right is the one with caviar on it.  I thought it was good :)

 Don't I look proper?  Actually I had no idea what I was doing.  I rarely even have herbal tea so it was a new adventure on a lot of accounts.  Josh was dying at how much sugar I put in mine...

 Our sugar bowl had both brown and white sugar cubes...loved it!

 The sandwiches were amazing, but the desserts were shear heaven.

 Scones and cream.  I have made tea scones before and they weren't not even close to as delicious as these were.

 After tea we headed out to do the "Freedom Trail."  It is a must if you love history and visit Boston (even if you don't love history.  It is so interesting and very cool).

 Paul Revere's grave.  Josh and I are reading a book together (slowly but surely), right now about the American Revolution.  It was so neat to see where a lot of the events that we have read about took place.

 This graveyard was so cool and creepy.  It reminded Josh and I a lot of England. 

 Most of the gravestones had creepy skulls on them.  We read that it meant that the person was a God fearing Puritan.  It is funny that if you put that on a gravestone nowadays people would think you were a psycho.

The gravestone above was for "Mother Goose."  I didn't even know that was a real person.  She was :)

 Grave site of Samuel Adams.  The funniest thing was that the biggest grave marker was for Benjamin Franklin's parents.  They must of been cool. 

 I wanted to take a picture with this colonial looking guy, but now looking at the picture it sort of creeps me out.

 I have so many random pictures of little alley ways and side streets of Boston.  I just loved it all.  We bought Subway passes (called the "T") but chose to walk a lot of where we went.  I am so glad that we did that, we saw a lot more of the city that way.

 This was the balcony where the Declaration of Independence was first read. 

 Incidentally it is also the site of the Boston Massacre. 

 Everyone told us that we had to visit Mike's Pastry and so of course we did.  It is in the North End where a lot of the Italian restaurants so I don't know why that I didn't realize that it would be Italian pastry.

 I have had Cannoli once before and I didn't love it and Josh hadn't ever had it.  We shared this baby and can I tell you it was A.MA.ZING.  I wanted to go back and get more :)

 This was the home of Paul Revere. 

 Inside the Old North Church (where the signal was hung that the British were crossing The Charles River to get to Charlestown).

 Outside The Old North Church.

 This was one of the last stops of The Freedom Trail and we were too late to be able to go on board (a lot of things in Boston closed early) but we got to see it up close.  This is Old Ironsides (or USS Constitution).  It was a ship commissioned by George Washington and is the oldest warship afloat today. 

 The history of this ship is really interesting if you ever get a chance to learn about it.

 Last stop of the Freedom Trail, this monument to the Battle of Bunker Hill. 

 After our day we headed home and to this little Indian Bistro that was around the corner from our hotel. 

 It was really so delicious.  We ate Samosas which was something we loved when we were in England.  So so yummy. 

Okay sorry about the picture of my meal, but neither of us had ever had Indian Food before.  We had decided to try new things on our trip to Boston and this was a fun one for us.  The food was delicious and I have been craving it ever since.  There is an Indian restaurant by us that I am dying to try.

I have been having good memories of this trip ever since we got back.  Hopefully I will get out 4th day posted soon.