Patriotic and Proud

Independence Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. There is a spirit of camaraderie in the air on July 4th, don't you think? I have read a few blog posts recently on Christians and patriotism. Should we celebrate America when God shows no partiality? One pastor whose blog I read believes that patriotism in the form of hymns and such should be kept completely out of the church. I disagree!! Consider these lyrics:

America, America, God shed His grace on Thee!

God Bless America! Stand beside her and guide her...

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement seat.
Oh, be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet, 
Our God is marching on.

And my favorite perhaps:
In the beauty of the lillies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on!

Why should we not praise God for this mighty blessing of being American and even more, of being free. Don't we as Christians have more freedom to celebrate than anyone else? We have freedom in Christ! So, let's celebrate!!!

I come from a strong military history, so this may be where my strong patriotism gets it's roots. My husband is celebrating 11 years in the Army, my Dad was a marine, both my grandpas and both of Casey's were in the military too and his dad is a Vietnam War veteran. My mom's dad was a World War II vet. My husband is an Iraq War vet. We know what freedom costs and we're a proud bunch. Let us all try to imagine what a lack of freedom looks like whenever we start to feel less than proud to be an American, shall we?

Anyway, moving on :)

We had such a wonderful holiday weekend. We had a potluck after church on Sunday, true to Baptist form :) I had made the girls some skirts and appliqued some t-shirts to match. I made myself a festive dress after finding some perfect fabric at Denver Fabrics recently.

I scored the red belt at a thrift store and the lovely pearls were a gift from a precious friend when her grandmother passed away and she inherited more jewelry than she knew what to do with :) I cherish them, Jenn, thank you!

I have decided to start recording my pattern reviews on patternreview.com so those interested can read them and those who don't care don't have to, ha! I'll post a link to this dress review when I get that going!

Yesterday (July 4th) was a full day, but so much fun, from beginning to end. We started out at a park, while a bunch of guys from our church and some other churches got together to play baseball. Casey's been wanting to do this for awhile, so he was very excited. It was HOT, but really fun. (I didn't play, I'm sports-impaired, but I did play blob-tag, freeze-tag, London Bridges and ran races with all the kiddos :)

Later we had some people over and look what the girls and I made!

I found this idea on Pinterest and you can find the simple instructions here. Ours aren't nearly as tidy as the ones in the picture, but we had a lot of messy fun making them :)

There are lots of dessert-in-a-jar recipes around the ol' Internet these days and I can now speak from experience that they are great crowd-pleasers!

The kids watched as the men shot off some fireworks. Fire makes me a nervous wreck, so when they moved to the front yard, I did not follow and observe. I told myself that a bunch of military men know what they are doing with dangerous things like that, haha.

After that, we played Sequence. What a fun game, I guess I had forgotten! This version is now on my wish list, as I was told it is also super fun (and educational).

We are lucky enough to live very close to where they shoot off the fireworks for the huge Firework Spectacular in our city, so a huge group took off to the Highline Canal trail about a block away to get a good view. Kelby was asleep, so my friend Liz and I watched the show through a clearing in the trees from my neighbor's driveway.

It was beautiful :) God, bless America!