My Birthweek

Our family never likes to celebrate one day for a birthday so we always  celebrate our Birthweek. Since the 4th of July is a included in my birthweek, I always have a great birthweek birthday.

The Quad Cities celebrated Red, White, and Boom on the evening of July 3rd. Our friend Kelly told us they shoot the fireworks from a barge on the Mississippi River.  I don't know Davenport well enough to find the exact place to see the fireworks without a crowd. I would rather avoid crowds. I then thought about Athens and how Molly and I found a perfect place  where we could see the fireworks up close and we would be the only ones in the area. Remember that Molly? It was on the walking bridge over East Campus Road.  Since I didn't know where to go in Davenport, I decided to invite ourselves to our friend's apartment. Terre and Frank are the friends that have the really cool apartment which is mostly windows that overlook the Mississippi.

Here are daytime pictures of when we went over for a very nice dinner soon after we moved here.

The picture below is Frank dishing up some ice cream for us in his kitchen.

This is what we ate for dinner, before ice cream. I should let everyone think that Terre and Frank made all of this but it was actually take out, and it was excellent!

Because I had been to the apartment several times, I knew it would be the perfect place for fireworks. My sister Mary, went with us too.

When we first walked out of the elevator, we were excited to see the succulents my sister Sherry had put together for Frank. The pottery was painted by Frank's mom and he had a hard time letting some of that go for the  garage sale. I blogged about that sale awhile ago. I thought how nice it was that everyone who came to their floor, would see the beauty when the elevator doors opened.

The fireworks were beautiful. There were two barges and both barges were synchronized to each other. I am not sure if it was to music because we were inside. Very spectacular and Frank said it was supposed to be the biggest and best yet. We were very pleased. I took several pictures but you know how fireworks pictures turn out, they don't. I did get one of Terre and one of her dogs Juanita, who growled at the fireworks.

When it was over I thanked them for letting me invite ourselves and I would call them whenever I wanted to come over. They said that was fine. We had to leave right away because we had to get up at 5am on Tuesday to start our July 4th day. Weeks ago we received this in the mail.

The first stop July 4th was to pick up Mike's mom in Lisbon at 7:45, an hour and fifteen minutes away. We then headed to Martell (population 254) to meet more family for the firemen's pancake breakfast.

It was all you can eat, so I ate four. YUM.

We then headed to Monticello for the parade.
The parade had emergency vehicles, trucks, tractors, floats, more tractors, belly dancers, and horses. To see all of this, it took over an hour. Every vehicle threw candy except for the cheese and beef trucks. They threw cheese and beef sticks.  I left empty handed but the kids had bags full, probably more than what they get at halloween. This is less work for them too.

When the parade was over, we went to Sharon and Bill's house for lunch. This is Mike's mom's sister and husband.
This is the view from their driveway, beautiful Iowa.

I decided to bring something vegetarian to the luncheon besides buns, and introduce my Iowa family to some non meat foods.
I made a double batch of tabbouleh salad since there would be around 21 people. I ended up bringing a lot back home. There were a few that liked it and one family member asked for the recipe. Sharon said she is excited to have me bring new things to family functions.  Tofu will be next, and I will just make one batch instead of a double. When I mentioned tofu there was a lot of grumbling in the room. I will have to find the best tasting tofu recipe.

We spent the whole day at Sharon and Bill's and had a great time catching up and telling stories. We drove Janelle back to the farm and before we left she asked if I wanted anything out of her garden. Of course, yes.
I put my foot in these pictures so you could get an idea of the size of these vegetables. They are like giant green flowers.

I took pictures while Janelle picked and cut and pulled and did all of the work.

When we got home we were so tired but I had to clean up the veggies. They are so beautiful!

Mike said my birthweek is now over.