It's a wrap (up)!

The McHusband and I have really enjoyed our long weekend. And guess what? It's not over yet. We're seeing some more friends tonight.

I figured I'd do a wrap-up of our Fourth of July weekend in one post. We'll see if Blogger can handle it.

On Thursday, we joined our usual Friday-night-dinner crew for dinner at O'Charley's.

Friday night, the McHusband and I grilled some chicken-kielbasa-veggie skewers and had corn on the cob.

I made a jerk glaze for them from my new issue of Cuisine at Home and it turned out really good. Again, I have to include pictures and stories of all my cooking successes because, well, they're so far and few between.

Later that night, Ryan and Sandra, our old neighbors, came over to hang out. Sandra's dad and his wife are visiting from Germany so R & S had free babysitters to take advantage of. We sat out on the deck and it ended up getting so chilly out that I put on a long-sleeved shirt and the McHusband put on a fleece jacket. Definitely not NC-in-July weather, but we were happy to have it.

Saturday: We went to Chelle and Jeremy's for games, a cookout, and fireworks. First, I put together some flower arrangements to take over there.

I'm sure Martha could come up with something far more exciting than bandanas, but my name's Stephanie and I'm happy with bandanas.

Jeff and Karen came with their little girl, Anna, who is turning 1 today. They adopted her in November and she couldn't be cuter if she tried.

Leigh and Mickey were there, and Jovyn even came down from Virginia.

Jeremy and Chelle made their own Corn Hole boards and corn bags - Jeremy assembled the boards and painted them and Chelle sewed the bags.

Here's a close-up as well as the innovative way Terry keeps track of his corn bags.

The McHusband, Chelle, and I worked to get Crispy Wickets set up. They have some hard ground over there so we were doing whatever we could to get the wicket in the ground.

Chelle supervised then took matters into her own hands.

We finally found a method that worked - bang a metal rod into the ground, then quickly replace the rod with the wicket.

So we got the one side set up and needed to do the other side. Guess who got stuck carrying everything over there?

And where was the McHusband? Telling me to hurry up!

Jeremy was hard at work at the grill while everyone else was goofing off. Thanks, Jeremy, the burgers were delicious as usual.

One of Chelle's neighbors brought homemade vanilla ice cream - yum! Here's Kim, me, and Vickie with ours. Geez, would someone tell that poor girl in the middle to use some powder?

After the fireworks (more on those in another post), we went inside and the guys went upstairs to play Rock Band.

As you can see, Kim and Vickie were just thrilled to have front-row seats at this concert.

Vickie even gave us her signature rock concert pose.

Sorry, Vickie, I had to. :)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Fourth. Look for a post about the fireworks as well as Tucker's latest escapade (or maybe that should be escape), which we came home to Saturday night.

(Sorry for the couple of layout issues. Blogger is being uncooperative.)