We had a great first fourth of July here, although it was a little sad to celebrate D's first birthday without fireworks. The air base did have their big show a couple nights before, but the girls missed it. (J. and I got to see it in passing as we drove to his birthday dinner.) We let D. enjoy her morning with some presents, pixelated Grandparents on Skype, and a try at the cake. She just ran her fingers through the frosting and refused to take more than a bite of it, which was probably because of the random fever she was running. Bummer. (Turned out she had the fever stage of roseola.) After her nap, we were ready to go set up for her party at the beach. I think there were about 25 of us there, and we were definitely over-prepared on the food end, so we ate burgers, dogs, chicken kabobs, and pasta salad for awhile. I guess we've never tried to reserve a picnic table at the beach before, but it seems that here they all have kind of steep reservation fees. We had gone the week or so before to reserve a picnic table and a tarp tent to go over it, and managed to get it all figured out with the language barrier. I was ready with my "July 4th - Monday - 1:00" phrase and we got the idea of a grill across, too. We had wanted to bring our own grill, so she pointed to a price that was cheaper than the one to rent theirs. So they charge you here to bring your own stuff. At every big beach we've been to they rent out grills, and people grill up their yakisoba noodles and veggies while we Americans cook meat! We were lucky to have picked a beach where they let you even bring your own food to grill, because we heard that lots of the beaches here make you buy from their own little restaurants to cook-out. It'd be like planning a small wedding every time you wanted to go to the beach! Next time we might just have to rent one of their grills, as it was hard labor for Jose getting our huge grill (that I'd found on the sidewalk) down from our place to laying flat in the back of the van with all the seats folded down. God gave us a beautiful 4th of July here - no rain, only heat. I'm already eyeing spots for next year's party. :)
She didn't feel like getting her hands messy. Poor girl.
I had to try some new cupcake "styles" from a book my sis gave me for Christmas. So the ones above are supposed to be coals on a grill. Does it look like that? I made the frosting too black. And that's the raw hamburger sitting next to them, made from rice cakes. :)
These cherry and berry pies were a little prettier than the coals. We still have about 2 big bags of M&Ms left of all the other colors, haha.
Saw the idea for a round flag/fruit pizza. After I had made the crust, I realized I could've just put it in a rectangular pan and had a real flag shape. Our fruit from the commissary is not very good most of the time, but at least the flag looked alright. :)
Everyone else had gone home, but we ended the day watching the warm sun fall below the horizon. We were happy to celebrate this day together as a family. Looking back on the year past is always bittersweet. Happy 1st birthday, D!
