Happy Fourth of July!

Image courtesy Vintage Holiday Crafts.com

I hope that each of you Americans reading this will have a glorious Fourth of July celebrating the birthday of our beloved country! Whether you celebrate with family, friends, or church family, whether you are here on US soil or elsewhere, whether you're enjoying a picnic, a parade, or fireworks, I hope that each of you will take a moment sometime throughout the day to thank God for the land He has blessed us to be able to live in. Our country has many serious problems and flaws, but it is still a wonderful place to live and has many blessings which we often take for granted. Yesterday as we sang "America the Beautiful" in church and came to these words:

"America! America!
God mend thine every flaw.
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!"

I found myself being reminded that truly, God is the only One who can mend our flaws -- but we have to want that to happen and we need to beseech God that it will happen. I was thinking, too, how so many of our citizens are so confused concerning the balance between liberty and self-control. Our land offers us many freedoms, yet we take them for granted and many times do not see the need to exercise self-control or self-restraint in any area of life. We want what we want, when we want it, and then when we meet the inevitable consequences of our lack of self-control, we expect our government to take care of us.

Let's take time today to beseech God to help us "mend our flaws" as a nation, and to thank Him for the privilege of living in this land.

We have no special plans for the day other than getting some outdoor tasks done around home and possibly spending some time with extended family. But we started celebrating early!

On Thursday my granddaughters baked patriotic cookies using a Stars & Stripes Funfetti ® cake mix, and we frosted them with white frosting and red, white and blue sprinkles.

And we enjoyed strawberry shortcake for dessert on Saturday night, complete with star-shaped shortcakes and real whipped cream! (Five of my grandchildren, my daughter and I had gone strawberry picking on Friday.)

Then on Sunday we enjoyed a church picnic after the morning service. I took along Baked Beans,
a Red, White & Blue Pasta Salad,

(Photo by Taste of Home)

a strawberry pie

(Photo by Taste of Home)

and a Red, White and Blue Berry Pie. Mmmm-mm!

(Photo by Taste of Home)

Sunday night, Mr. T and I had a little campfire with our granddaughters and enjoyed sparklers and toasted marshmallows.

So whatever we do today, we have already had lots of celebratory fun.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!