Fourth of July, Baby!

Yes, I know. It was HALF A WEEK ago now. Such old news. But we had a fun day, and I wanted to tell you about it.

By fun day, of course, I mean that Ryan worked for the first part of it, but I scrapbooked, so I had fun!

Last year, when we watched fireworks over the lake, Ryan noticed a little BBQ restaurant that he wanted to try. So a year later {we're quick!!!!}, we headed back for dinner! Destination: Big Dog's Smokehouse BBQ.

It was a cute little building with all kinds of character, and we had some fun with the BBQ sauces while we waited:

Food was good - and we ate up, since we knew we were going to be outside forever with only overpriced fair-esque foods nearby!

And then...we walked over to the lake to scope out our spot.

It was pretty empty when we arrived, so we had plenty of choices to set up our little folding loveseat and kick back to read. Yes, read. We're such nerds.

The cannon was back again this year, and again, we had about a dozen heart restarts every time they set it off with no warning.

Loved watching the sunset - shoot, I love it that we even had a visible sun TO set that day. I've missed those!!

So many boats congregated in the water to watch the show....

When book-reading ceased because we were done {Ryan} and it got too dark {me}, we just curled up and talked - and dodged the footballs the kids in the game behind us failed to catch.

And at long last...the show began!

{Doesn't that look like a smiley face in the middle of that one??}

 We had the most lovely night, capped off by coffee and cookies...and we were grateful this fell on a weekend this year, so we didn't have a full day of work the next day!