July 2nd Times the 4th Equals 8

Hadley turned 8! This year she was very interested and involved in her cake making. She wanted chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, and some piping decorations. We made the best chocolate cake ever, and it was! We had some leftover vanilla buttercream (dyed orange) from Father's Day cupcakes, so that was what she decorated with. She was so excited to use a piping bag!! But I think the frosting was too loose, so any detail was quickly lost, and it became more of an abstract piece.

Since 2020 is the year of no parties, I told Hadley that she could be the boss (within reason) on her birthday. She said she just wanted books and cake for her birthday, oh and a drive-by parade, if possible. We also went for a yard decoration, as we'd seen a few around the neighborhood over the last few months.

Now, about that parade... It was a tough time to be on a Thursday before a holiday weekend, but we did scrape together a few cars to come by. It was plenty for Hadley, as it was searingly hot! Bonus that the fire truck even came by, sirens blazing!!

 

Finally, it was time for cake! Uncky Dan and family came over to share in a birthday dinner and the birthday song before cake. The cake was a delicious end to the day!

Speaking of deliciousness, here are the last couple of days' goodies from cooking camp. When I asked her if she wanted to do cooking camp on her birthday, she replied, "of course I do!" The first two pics were on her birthday, doing what she loves to do - even with sticky pizza dough, and yes, she is wearing a leotard under her apron because it was her birthday. Why not?

Cooking camp's red, white, and blue everything bled on into our 4th of July. Now that I know you can dye just about anything, we had red and blue pancakes for breakfast, though in pastels, they looked more like they belonged at a baby shower.

Then we dyed some vanilla frosting and iced our rice krispie treats to take to the neighbors', where we BBQ'ed burgers and hot dogs and cooled off in the pool.

After a brief intermission, we reconvened for street fireworks, starting with sparklers, Roman Candles, and snaps. Several houses on our street had big fireworks (including where we were), and we were pretty surrounded from other neighborhoods with big shows all around. It seems like people were making up for not being able to go to city displays this year. But amazingly, it all shut down at a reasonable time.

How's this for a patriotic pic? Happy birthday, 'Merica! 

In other news, our neighbor is home from college for a few more weeks and teaches private tennis lessons to kids in the neighborhood. We figured since we can't swim this summer, at least we could make use of the tennis courts, which are still open. So, the kids have been to a couple of lessons and have really enjoyed it so far.

It's too hot during the day, but we might make this a family activity in the evenings every once in a while. It's really nice to be active together! We're missing our hikes...