Work a 12 1/2 hour shift lol. I also picked up overtime next week. Two shifts. Probably going to regret that. I need to pick up some frozen meals tomorrow when I'm out. Not going to cook anything.

I may take a short drive and watch the fireworks on the other side of the river. Probably will stay in my car because this area had 8+ inches of rain over the weekend and the mosquitos are out in force. They laugh this year at most bug sprays.

It's just the two of us and we're planning on grilling out every night. However, the forecast says possible thunderstorms. If that happens, I have pulled pork in the freezer.

No plans here at all. One daughter is working this weekend, The Princess is also at work, the other daughter is camping up north. I hope nothing comes up, Mother has been here for a couple of weeks and I'm way behind on Township work.

Annie

My husband will be barbecuing/smoking a brisket in the Weber. I will make Russian salad (a type of potato salad where everything is diced,) a chopped salad, lots of cut up veggies to snack on, and a Pavlova with raspberries and blueberries, for a red white and blue dessert and a regular fruit salad.

I thought my brother would be in town so we were going to plant something, but i misunderstood his email and he’s not coming for 3 more weeks. So, we might do something smaller, just us 3, and DS#1 and his gf and my other brother. A bigger event later when the traveling brother is here, we can place Mom next to Dad at the cemetery.

Nothing major. I did buy a small seedless watermelon from the same place that had excellent watermelons last year, but that's as far as menu planning has gotten. Our town isn't setting off fireworks this year, so I'll sit on the patio and watch the fireflies instead.

I'm working myself up to make a big pot of chili but not necessarily for the 4th. Maybe an apple pie. No big plans.

No fireworks at all due to drought. A few relatives, DIL's BD and a Giants game on the 5th.

Party at my house. Grilled burgers and Italian sausage, maybe some grilled corn, too -- haven't decided that yet. Sides of tomato salad, bacon-potato salad, baked beans. Dessert of homemade ice-cream cake and flourless almond torte. And hopefully a good card game into the night.

I gave my mom’s caregiver a few hours off so Ill be staying with her.. Whoop dee doo. A small town near me has had fourth of july activities and fireworks for decades. not last year because of covid but now they have permanently cancelled it. Its such a shame to see it end but the population of the town has changed and there arent enough volunteers to make it happen .

DH & I met on the Bicentennial 45 years ago. We have reservations for dinner on July 4th at one of our favorite restaurants to celebrate our anniversary. Then we'll head home and watch the Boston Pops July 4th extravaganza on television. The Pops are playing this year at Tanglewood in western Mass instead of the Boston Esplanade. John Batiste and Mavis Staples are guests. Should be a good show. Air conditioned and no biting insects!

On Saturday our township has their fireworks at the sports complex. They always have a nice display. We are taking 2 of the grands. They also have food trucks, face painting , and give away for the kids. Everyone sits on the soccer field and has a good time. On Sunday is my one grands birthday. The family is going to the lake then back to my house for Chinese take out and birthday cake.

One of the local communities near us had to cancel their fireworks this year due to the increases of the cost. The cost has doubled for the fireworks and the community just can't afford it.

On the 4th I will be at home relaxing and doing as little as possible. My Dh's family reunion is on Saturday. Its 100 miles east of here and we go in the morning and return home that evening. Since we missed last year, it will be so good to have all the family together.

There will be no fireworks in my plans. I have made known my opinion of these ridiculous displays before. All the concern about how we pollute our air is forgotten while we oooh and awe over this major contributor to the pollution in our environment.

Hamburgers on the grill here with the usual garden side fixings, hopefully to include our first picked ears of corn on the cob.

We are going to our condo for the weekend. just chilling and grilling and will likely go to the pool for a little while and enjoy reading and social time while its cooler this weekend. Several of us pooled funds and we will watch fireworks over the lake Sunday night. Everybody in the complex is invited to bring chairs to lakeside and their own drinks and watch. There are only 60 units so we’ll see how many are there.

We will be making pizzas on our Ooni pizza oven in the patio beside the pool. We'll probably go in the pool after we eat, as we have to wait until 6 PM for the pool to be in the shade, but the patio beside the pool will be shady enough earlier for us to cook. The pizzas only take 90 seconds max to cook, and so we don't have to spend much time outside for that.

It's supposed to reach 112°F every day through Monday, more or less, and the pool water has been 95° when we go in at 6 PM, which feels like bath water. My normal body temperature is about 96.8°, and so the pool water is getting close to that.

The first time I went to Palm Springs was in 1968 for the 4th of July with relatives from Long Beach who had a week-end home here. It was 116° in PS, and I was sad to leave Long Beach, where it had been 72° - much more pleasant than what it had been in Texas before I left. I remember the pool water in Palm Springs feeling downright hot, and I thought that it had come from hot springs, but now I know that pools simply get hot here.

We have lettuce and tomatoes for a salad, and that's all we will have with the pizzas. I need to make some more tonic water, and that is going to take a while, as I normally let it steep for two or three days.

I bet you'll have a fun time with your nieces and nephews rolling up the eggrolls Amy! I have oncall duty so we'll be hanging out at home keeping the dogs calm and medicated :-)

amy....that sounds like FUN! Eggrolls....Yum! I haven't made those in years. I just don't fry anything any more.

Our HOA is putting on a BBQ and parade. It's doing a loop, which just happens to be down our street. We put out a few small flags for decor. I'm pretty sure it's going to get rained out. It rains almost every day.

Yes, we bought fireworks. We plan to cookout, but not traditional fare. Cedar planked salmon, pineapple, fresh corn, maybe something else too. Homemade vanilla ice cream.

Sauteed kale, bbq riblets, salad. I bought 3 small individual ice creams for my son, his wife and my grand daughter so that there would be none left at my place.

Just me alone as usual, its just another day.

Amy I am curious about your egg rolls.

In what way? I mixed up some buffalo chicken dip (cooked chicken, cream cheese, franks red hot, ranch dressing and shredded 4 cheese mix) but instead of baking it or putting it in a crock pot, i spooned it in some eggroll wrappers, rolled em up and deep fried them. They were a big hit. The only annoyance is they seem to get pasty fairly quickly if I make them to far ahead before frying, so it is a last minute thing. Using the advice I got on the subject from the cooking forum, I have the routine down.

I'm going to make baked beans from scratch. Other than that, nothing special. Having Dad over for a cookout, pork chops for him and hubs, veggie burger for me. I think I'm doing a cous cous or pasta salad to use up all the leftover veggies in the fridge. We will possibly go watch the fireworks, although you have to go so early and stay so long just waiting around to get a good viewing spot. In his old age, my Dad gets bored and fidgety/fussy quickly. Hubs and I left to our own devices would be hanging out like the stereotypical millennials, glued to our phones. But IMHO, that's what smart phone are made for, sitting around waiting . . . no harm no foul in that case. Hubs and I spend almost every waking hour together, we don't lack for quality interaction time . . .

The cake is done for the grands birthday tomorrow.

I will watch tomorrow's stage of the Tour de France, then go see the town's fireworks at the high school. Maybe use up the last of my apples in a pie while I watch the race. I would enjoy a good parade (I enjoy marching bands), but no one seems to be having one. The next city up the pike is having a free concert before their fireworks, so I may go up there instead. When I lived in SoCal, taking a picnic to the free symphony concert was a tradition with my young DD.

Sitting on porch watching tide roll in. Afternoon,walk two blocks to grands. Their parents are cooking ribs with all the trimmings. I am baking a white sheet cake with cream cheese icing.

Function, if my life were a cake, it would be that cake.

That sounds different and very good. Thanks for the recipe.

I'm telling ya Dolly, it was a huge hit and now I fear I'm going to be rolling eggrolls for every occasion for the rest of my life. No one wants just the dip anymore. It HAS TO BE IN EGGROLL FORM. I think i opened a can of worms.

Horseback ride in the AM. I will watch the sky full of all the fireworks shows in the evening. We have no legal fireworks here so every year the young and rebellious put on shows that rival anything the professions do. I think they must set up some sort of unofficial competitions. It sounds like a war zone at times but it's a good show.

We are having a party. Our house has a city view, so we see a lot of fireworks on the 4th. It is usually our biggest shindig of the year. This year we are serving brats, beans, fruit salad, strawberry pretzel salad and more, of course we will have appetizers and desserts as well. I serve a sangria that is popular too.

Of course we skipped the party last year, happy to be able to have friends and family join us this year. Some fanily we gave not seen since before Covid. Looking forward to the day.

Have a Happy 4th everyone.

Well my plans just got messed up.

I was out this evening buying food for SO to grill tommorow night. I was going to cook for my sisters party but I was planning on coming home and eating with SO.

Anyway, as I was driving home I got a call from the other night shift person at work. He was giving me a heads up that he was going to call in sick tomorrow night because he is "in agony." What kind of agony? His neck hurts. Well wah wah wah. Now, as someone who had worked with neck and shoulder pain so severe it was causing random extremely painful spasms that brought me almost to tears for over a week, I am annoyed. Very very annoyed. We have a desk job for crying out loud. He can sit there all 12 hours with a heating pad and relax, as he is going to be doing at home. Man up.

I suppose I should be grateful that he gave me warning so I could make alternate plans. I had to call my sister and tell her that I would come early and make the food for her to finish later. SO is still going to grill the food, I am just going to have to take mine to work.

And that's that I guess.

Amylou, isn't convenient that he just happen to have neck pain on a holiday. Sounds like he is taking advantage of your good nature. I wouldn't answer my phone when work calls. Just tell them you were at a party and didn't hear the phone. Dump the problem employee back on them.

Actually,I really don't think it has anything to do with the holiday. He never minds working the holidays as we get paid A LOT to do so. And I do believe him when he says his neck hurts.

I just think he is a wuss and a crybaby. Any sort of discomfort to him is unbearable. He is in his 70s and likes to milk that but he is very active and healthy otherwise. He's just a whiny little wuss.

I am not so I have little patience for it.

AAAAAAND i just got a call that I need to come in immediately and work the remainder of his shift tonight because he is hurting and wants to go to the ER.

grrrrrrrr.

Either steak on the grill or BBQ ribs, potato salad, yellow summer squash. DH just made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies.

What I dread is all the illegal fieworks. Everything is bone dry around here. We could have major fires and the fine, if caught, is a big one. There are some professional shows but we usually have fog, so disappointing.

We're home. Our DS and family are in Michigan at DIL's parents second home. I had my monthly infusion to treat the MM on Friday, so am a little under the weather for a couple of days.

Last night our next door neighbors had their very own aerial fireworks for 20 minutes, then the club to our northeast had their display. It was all actually very pretty. We had calm, humid air -- and since Sunday is our legal 'watering day' I started our irrigation at midnight.

Marilyn C. -- My DM was only a year younger than yours. I wish she'd told me more about the events of her youth. Nobody ever talked about the Spanish Flu or WWI, and very little about the Depression. We always displayed the flag on national holidays -- the big wool one from her DF's casket. He served in the Spanish American War.

We are blessed to have been born in America!

Amy,

Our 4th was somewhat a bust too. We did enjoy our fireworks, and those we watched across the lake, and... the ice cream. That was it. Sigh. Lunch didn't turn out and we fought. Oh well. Last year was our best ever, and this, not so much. Hope he was ok.

Lars, I'd love your recipe for tonic water. I've just been buying the cheap stuff at CVS, but since it's something that my husband enjoys, I'd like to be able to wow him with some homemade.

So, not a big busy Fourth, but DS and GF, and my brother, came up. We pretty much just ate. Simple fare, just chips and DH’s guacamole, and veggies with dip. It was a bit warm out for DH so he didn’t grill, he cooked in the kitchen.

Our guests left after we ate as one wanted to avoid the people who pull over to the highway shoulder to watch the fireworks, and DS and GF wanted to get to their city beach to watch fireworks up and down the lakefront. DH doesn’t like fireworks (the noise, the numbers, the cars) and we have enough trees that we can only hear, not see, all the fireworks around us.

We were down at the lake for a four day weekend. There was a commercial fireworks display on the lake up by the dam but we didn't go because we didn't want to be out on the lake in the dark with hundreds of other drunk boaters.

Instead we rode the golf carts and side-by-sides over and watched a private display that a group puts on every year about 1/2 mile away from the cabin. I'd have to say it was the best private display I've ever seen. It lasted nearly an hour and was very well done with few lulls in the action. They also had people making balloon characters, popcorn, and snow cones for the kids. There must have been close to 500 spectators. They had a donation can set up for everyone to chip in to cover the costs. I think my group gave a couple hundred. Well worth it!

We had a fish fry of fresh crappie and catfish prior to the fireworks with Cole slaw, hush puppies, and onion rings for the sides.

We had more neighbors shooting off large fireworks (rockets and LOUD noisemakers - one made the house shake!) than ever before both Saturday and Sunday. At least one neighbor had a rocket land on her roof - fortunately no damage.

The increase in people setting off fireworks in the past year - for a week before and after around many holidays, and randomly too (which we sometimes have to asked if it was gunfire, since that is also increasing in adjacent sections of the surrounding city - and it sometimes is) has been a hot topic from time to time on the neighborhood page. We have some vets with PTSD in the neighborhood, and a plethora of dogs who apparently aren't descended from hunting breeds.

There was a comment about the unfortunate death of the Columbus hockey team's goalie due to an errant rocket - and the one neighborhood person who is always pooh-poohing complaints about the fireworks responded with "accidents happen."