4th of July Festivities

While many Americans were outside celebrating our independence with barbecues, outdoor activities, & finishing off the night with fireworks, we spent our day slightly differently.  Since it was Kyle's special day off of work, he wanted to sleep in til 10am.  I woke up at 9am and quietly left the bedroom so he could get his extra hour of sleep.  Somehow, he woke up at 9:30am and noticed that I was gone, but my study materials and computer were still in the bedroom...

Kyle: Jasmin?

Jasmin: Yes, sweetie.

Kyle: What are you doing?

Jasmin: I'm looking through your pictures. [of his trip out west]

Kyle: I wanted to go through those with you...oh well.

I didn't realize he wanted to go through them with me, so I stopped looking at them and instead started looking at every album he had, from the beginning.  It was really fun reminiscing, and seeing how much people have changed in the past few years.  Leo is all grown up.  The kids are all grown up (niece, nephew, brother, sister).  I saw my face go from normal to a little plumper to normal.  It was really wonderful to look back on our time in Ethiopia together.  Unfortunately, we took very few pictures of us, but we still have the memories and that's all that matters.

When Kyle finally got out of bed, we looked through some more albums of Ethiopia together before starting on the road trip ones.  He started flipping through the pictures from the trip and I said "wait, aren't you going to tell me about it?" and he said "we were driving...and the pictures are in order..."  And then I was really confused because I could have just flipped through the pictures by myself.  Kyle needed to go through the pics and send some to Bre, so I left him to that and played around on my computer.

Ok, I'll skip to the good stuff.  Our day was really boring, so around 2pm I text Bre for help.  With suggestions of jam making, card making, and watercolors...we could only do one of the above due to resources.  So we made jam!  Homemade, pectin-free, strawberry jam!

We used this recipe and enjoyed the time spent together. :)  We didn't follow the canning instructions because we don't have the supplies, but we put the jam into several small Snapware Glasslock containers after letting it cool on the counter, then in the fridge, and finally we put the lids on after it was completely cooled.  One small container stayed in the fridge while the others made their way to the freezer for future use.

Cutting up the strawberries.  I decided dicing them would be
better than crushing them.  Kyle is amused when I {quite frequently}
try to improve upon recipes.

Heating up the strawberry, lemon juice, sugar mixture.

Rolling boil.

Lots of stirring was involved.

Kyle cheesing it up for me.

Look at my man stirring!

Jam in jars.

The final product.  So delicious!

After making the jam, I tried uploading the photos by directly sticking the memory card into my computer.  It works perfectly on Kyle's but I've never had it work on mine.  It started to work...but then said it was importing for forever...and I decided to give up and plug the camera in via cable...but of course it wouldn't cancel the import and I had to force close everything and I thought my computer was going to kill the memory card or explode - you know, the extremes.  Finally everything got loaded back up and the pictures imported effortlessly with the cable.  Unfortunately, it was around 4:30pm at this point and the BBQ at Zarrin's house started at 4.  We figured it was ok not to arrive on time because food would probably be served later.  Wrong.  Everyone was waiting on us!  So we rushed out of the house, only to really feel how hot it was.  Kyle was wearing his black jeans and I made him go back in the house to change.  I'm sure he appreciated it later, considering we ate outside under a tent - it was so hot the stick of butter for the corn melted.

Dessert #1: American flag vanilla pudding with berries.

Dessert #2: Chocolate chip cookie happy birthday cake.

Dessert #3: Gluten-free shortbread with chocolate and berries.
This was my favorite of the night.

Dessert #4: Heavenly chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.

Our evening was really fun.  We ate delicious food, delicious desserts (I know, I know, desserts = type of food), and then played Yahtzee with Hootan, Zarrin, & Josh.  I'd never really played Yahtzee before, and I kind of liked it!  We played two games, first won by Hootan, second won by Josh.  Kyle & I tied for second place the first game, and I held second place for the second game.  We were going to watch Independence Day, but it got to be too late and Kyle had to work in the morning.

Yahtzee, anyone?

You might be wondering: no fireworks?!  We were going to head downtown to watch the fireworks over the river, but it was 9pm when we finished the first game of Yahtzee and I thought it was too late to go (the fireworks started at 10pm).  So we have now missed fireworks for the second time during our marriage.  Last year, we were traveling back from Boston on the 4th, but as we drove through Cleveland the fireworks were going off downtown, so that was cool...it just wasn't the romantic, snuggly, under-the-fireworks experience I've been looking forward to.  Maybe next year.  All in all, it was a great evening. :)