A belated 4th of July

I am pleased to report that I finally have photos from the 4th of July and can now share our fun day with y'all.  This year our church hosted the 4th at the Greene Acres event barn, owned by our dear friends, the Greene family.  We had a wonderful time of fellowship and games, and TONS of food--including a roasted half hog : ).

About a week before we headed out to "the barn" to make some decorations and help sweet Charity with prep work.

Charity is a WONDERFUL coordinator and party planner and it was a real joy to help her out.  

Isn't it just lovely?!?!?!?!

Charity asked me to do her a special favor and write out the Declaration of Independence on a large chalkboard to hang up in the barn.  I quickly agreed and then had to sit and think "how in the world am I going to do this????." Nonetheless I tackled the daunting task, deciding to write it out as an exact replica of the real document. 

And here it is!!! 3 days of steady work, lots of erasing and redoing I finally completed this enlarged copy of our Declaration of Independence. It was a HUGE--and somewhat daunting--task but it was so much fun to stretch myself and learn some perseverance.

And here's how it looked hanging up : ) 

Now if y'all ever need to host a large function, Charity is the person to go to.  She is so talented! Her decorations were so cute and she was so organized.  She definitely knows how to throw a party : )

Well now that y'all have seen the preliminaries let's move on to the actual 4th.  Seth and Trevor were p at 3 AM to begin roasting the hog and were going at it all day!! Thank you, guys! It was DELICIOUS!!!  We all began to arrive around 2 PM and spent time playing games, wading in the creek and catching up with friends before the meal.

Playing water balloon toss.

Sweet girls : )

Having fun with the piñata.

About 5ish we all headed in to feast on delicious, tender barbecue and all the fixin's that go with it--boy, oh boy, was it good!!! The best pork and barbecue sauce I have ever eaten!!! I'm getting hungry just writing about it : )

We also had a good ol' fashioned pie contest with quite a few pies entered.

Here's my pie, an All-American Berry Pie

Our pie judge!

Elizabeth

After dinner we all prepared for a patriotic program, with lots of music and even a short play.

Reading the Declaration of Independence

"Mamie"

"George Washington"

and "Betsy Ross" 

Haviland, David and I singing "Patriot's Honor"

The girls singing "Turn the Tide"

We had LOTS of other music but I haven't uploaded them to youtube yet so I can't post them here but I think you get the idea.  All in all we had a wonderful time of fellowship as we celebrated the Independence of this great US of A.