4th of July

Happy Birthday, America! I love the 4th of July! It is my favorite holiday. 

Anthony's family visited over the 4th of July. We had 8 people at our house, so I was able to do some baking in some creative ways. 

The American Flag - berry style!

 For breakfast, I made our now traditional holiday breakfast - gluten free lemon poppy seed, homemade lemon syrup, eggs and turkey bacon.

On the baking side of the 4th, I made these gluten free biscuits, topped with homemade marshmallow infused whip cream, strawberries and a blueberry. Yum! These are so cute!!!

 After breakfast we went to the Cathedral and then to Great Falls.

After Great Falls we went home to see if the rain was going to stop and if the National Park Services would call of the fireworks. They did not. So we trekked down to the mall and sat in the rain....

 We got to the mall around 7:30am and I thought for sure that being in the middle of the mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. We sat along 7th street.

Did I mention that it had been raining all day? Yeah, well...when the fireworks started going off we got yet another year of smoke. Boo! Not the 4th that I have always imagined DC to be like. We will try one more time, next year - our last July in DC (yes, we do have an exit strategy of when we will be coming home - not all things are finalized, but what we do know at the moment is we will all (key word - all, I am not sure on when I will be leaving) be leaving the DC area sometime during June of 2018). So, enjoy my few smoky pictures of fireworks around the Washington Monument and at least you know that mine are not from years past, like PBS did :)

Happy 240th Birthday, America!