Brief Holiday

We zoomed to Cleveland for the fourth of July where mother nature smiled upon us and made beautiful, sunny yet, non-humid weather. In fact, on the fifth, you might have needed a jacket for the evening. I always wanted a fourth of July like this when I was a girl.
There were family and neighborhood parties, barbeques and potluck feasts,waterballoon fights, bike parades, fireworks, suprise hikes along the Chagrin River and a little creek and some crafts. And, my phone takes pretty fair photos in a pinch (when we went along the river). It makea me smile.
These are cookies from BetterBitofButter.com. Order some. They taste great and are very beautiful to look at before you devour them.


I was clicking around Squaw Rock wearing my high heeled sandals (not fancy, more like the big wooden bottom kind...) because my sister in law took me over to the Chagrin River which is moments away from her house. I love the Cleveland Metroparks. I like tromping around in the woods and climbing on stuff. So, I doffed the heels as to not hurt myself while walking out on the rocks. And what happens when I trust myself to my bare feet? Well, they betray me, of course! They become wet and moisten the clay covered stone and cause me to wipe out. One wedges itself slyly in between two stones and the other one gives me the slip. Do I fall on the countless rocks you see scattered about? No, I manage to plant my @$$ directly into the river. Which drenched my pants when I stood up. Kinda like I had filled my pockets with waterballons and then busted them. Nice phone pic tho. If you see me at the con, I'll still have the big ol' bruise on my right leg. Maybe it will be yellow by then.
So, an hour later, I'm tromping down a creekbed with my niece,Hannah. She takes me to the coolest spot where there is real clay just jutting out of the riverbed. We gathered stones, chunks of clay and I made a walking stick to be sensible and check for deep bits in the river, and soft bits on land. We saw a wee little frog swim in the river, a bunch of iridescent dragonfly looking things and lots of crawfish exoskeletons. There were raccoon and possum tracks in the sandbar and I didn't run across any snakes! (YAY!) We picked wild black raspberries and I ate them. We used the clay to make leaf pressings. I took some home and now I want to take a pottery class. How cool would it be to make something from the clay you hauled out of the river yourself! Like a little cup or something.
We all watched fireworks which were pretty beautiful. I was able to photograph them using the nifty fireworks setting on my camera. Some of them look like undersea creatures.



And, there was fire. So, there were marshmallows. I toasted one so it was perfectly golden on all sides and crunchy. There was also some swimming. The water was warm and there was a diving board. Been a long time since I dived off a diving board. It felt amazing.

And, there's never enough cupcakes.