The Sweet Life

My phone rang the morning of July the 4th. It was EuroMom wanting to know if I wanted to go out for coffee. I did, of course. A couple of hours later we were sitting in a local coffee shop talking non-stop about a myriad of things. Kids, vacations, school, relationships, our current phase of life. We were there close to three hours and could've stayed a couple more. I love that she called at the last minute for an impromptu get-together. I'm already looking forward to the next time.

I love having friends who are so comfortable with us that they invite themselves over. That's what our dear friends, the Willi, did a couple of Sundays ago. They rightly suspected we weren't doing anything on the 4th and suggested we get together for food, fellowship, and fireworks. What a great time we had. It rained on and off, mostly on, but that didn't stop the kids from playing outside. We moms didn't care. We were enjoying appetizers and Soco and lemonade inside.

Grandpop came over and even he, being the loner that he is, had a really good time talking about his pre-retirement days here, former church members, and reminiscing about Nana. Now she would've had a grand time that day.

After stuffing ourselves on brisket, sausage, garlic potatoes, baked beans, cobb salad, and cookies we went outside for the pyrotechnic extravaganza. It's been rainy before on the 4th, but this year broke the record. There's nothing like rain, heat, and mosquitoes all at the same time. The kids played in the rain, ran through the smoke, oohed and aahed at the show all around us. The older kids even got to light a couple of fireworks which further fed FM#1's love of fire. Every year CeanBounter fine tunes his fireworks purchases and vows to "buy more of those next year".
I think it was our latest night yet with these friends. At the end of the evening we were stuffed, tired, hot, sweaty, but what sweet fellowship we enjoyed.

Looking back on the whole day, what jewels God has given us in friends like these.