Hooray for America

Every 4th of July I try to make it up to my family's cabin in Cumberland, Wisconsin. (A coworker of mine claims that everyone in Wisconsin calls cabins "cottages," drinking fountains "bubblers," docks "piers" and bar-b-ques "cookouts." I don't believe any of that.) Basically I just sit by the lake enjoying the weather while I eat meat and cheese and drink beer. It's pretty much the best time ever.

On the 4th all the boats on the lake are decorated with red, white and blue paraphernalia (flags, pin-wheels, streamers, etc.) and we have a parade. Our family adds a pirate flag to our pontoon for the occasion.

Afterwards we all pull up onto someone's property and have a potluck picnic. Meat, cheese, cake, brownies, chips, and little weenies wrapped in bacon. Meat wrapped in more meat- yes! At this function I tend to just find a table with my sister and her husband and avoid any socializing with anyone else on the lake. We had fun laughing at the little kids running around.

This one kid was wearing some wrap-around shades, and he'd be pretty happy for awhile, but if his shades came off he'd start whining. We called him "Whiny." Then there was another kid who had like seven pieces of cake, and then his mom informed him that he had had enough cake, so he went to all the forks, knives and spatulas that had frosting/cake crumbs/brownie remnants on them and stuck those in his mouth. We called him "Chewie."

After licking those clean, Chewie then put all the forks, knives and spatulas back in their respective cake/brownie pans and went off to find more things to put in his mouth. He went over to the ladder game and put the golf balls in his mouth. Then he'd take them out and throw them, run to pick them up, and put them in his mouth again. He did that like 100 times.

Then I went back to our cabin, took a nap, and woke up for a fish-fry.