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Our Fourth of July generally starts the day before -- like that of pretty much everyone else in our small town! People haul their folding chairs, or blankets or ropes or tarps or other sittable placeholders (the sidewalk becomes a commodity highly in demand on July 3rd), downtown to main street; and by the afternoon, the sidewalks have been adorned most thoroughly for tomorrow's Grand Parade. My sis and I bravely braved the masses, threw down our folding chairs in a pile and then ran home again.
Just kidding. But you can see it's a popular spot to be the day before Independence Day!
She and I were also on a mission to stock up on rock salt that afternoon, a requirement for a good old-fashioned Fourth (and if you don't already know what for and why, well, it's about time you did)... and we must not have been the only ones, because we got the last box at Walmart!
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Morning of the Fourth ... and bright and early it must be, too, because the ice cream making Must Go On.
This is without doubt one of my favorite July Fourth traditions. ;o) And when accompanied by the tunes of John Philip Sousa -- I challenge you to make ice cream as yummily without it. JP IS the spirit of Independence Day!
Okay. So it made us a little distracted, so we didn't put enough rock salt on the ice, which consequently caused the ice cream to take 15 minutes longer to freeze up than it normally does. But that's an irrelevant detail.
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Aaaaand, home to eat ice cream, watch Road to Avonlea and shoot off fireworks ... a lovely ending to a grand day!
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