Fourth of July

   My celebration of the Fourth of July began with a flag raising ceremony and pancake breakfast at the church. Our ward had done this for quite a few years. My grand daughter Annika rode with me as she had volunteered to cook pancakes with the young women. I had been asked to give a brief talk relating to the flag so we both had a reason to be early. Tony and Lia came a little later with the rest of their kids while Linda followed on her Vespa. I had written my talk down on my iPhone in case I needed to refer to it. As it turned out I didn't need to do that and gave a somewhat abbreviated talk from the one I had written. It's really not a good idea to be long winded when your remarks are standing between hungry people and breakfast. I will include an expanded version of the talk as a separate blog post.

    After the breakfast, Annika assisted me in making two pies.  I really needed her assistance due to the seven stitches in my left hand which I'm not allowed to get wet.  We made two pies; one cherry and one heavenly hazelnut. We picked the cherries from my little North Star and Montmorency pie cherry trees. The good news is that there are still enough cherries left on the two little trees for at least one more cherry pie. Annika did a great job and the pie crust turned out wonderful.

Heavenly Hazelnut Pie - The recipe is available in this blog, posted in May, 2010

The stars were Annika's idea

     We had a pretty traditional Fourth of July cookout. I cooked hamburgers over a wood fire while Linda made potato salad. We had all of the Veatches and most of the Romeros in attendance; which with Linda and I added up to six adults and 10 kids. We got to try out Linda's new badminton set while the hammock and Linda's monster teeter totter both got a pretty good workout. Once it got dark, Tony set off fireworks for the kids, followed by the usual sparklers.  Tony didn't go to the reservation but bought the fireworks at a nearby stand. That meant they were all legal fireworks. Even so, there were some pretty spectacular mortar shells included in the package. As always on the Fourth of July, the neighborhood sounded like a war zone. Under the category of tacky fireworks I've included the following video of the "Gassy Chicken".

      It just so happened that my week of chaplain duty with Fire District Four started at six p.m.  I had a number of pages from about 10 p.m. until midnight. Fortunately, none turned out to be serious (meaning nobody was seriously injured or deceased and no one's house burned). One person set his garage on fire by putting all of his "spent" fireworks in a plastic five gallon bucket and putting the bucket in his garage.  The firemen put out the fire before any serious damage occurred. There was also an apartment building that almost had their roof set on fire by a hot air chinese lantern. They looked so cute and harmless in the movie "Tangled". I guess that is one of the up sides of animation. You can send a bunch of burning paper bags up into the air without burning down the entire town. There were also a few brush fires. I spent some time listening to the radio traffic and it sounded like all the fire districts were pretty busy chasing down reports of brush fires.