Happy 4th

This is the first 4th of July I can remember the weather being cool and rainy. It was 65 degrees and rained all day. We didn't let the rain stop our celebrating, though. D started his day bright and early with a local 5K. N and I opted to stay home and sleep in a little. Fortunately N slept in longer than I did, so I was able to get in some yoga before he woke up. D brought home our typical Saturday morning McDonald's breakfast after his race. D ran his best race time of all the races he's participated in this season. (Good job, babe!)

My sister Skyped from the Netherlands later in the morning. It was wonderful to talk to her! N threw kisses to Aunt J through the camera, she blew kisses back to him. He accepted the kisses first, then pretended to spit them out and said they were sour. What a goof ball! Aunt J laughed and took it very well. After we got off the phone with Aunt J, we played and painted red, white and blue pictures together in the garage. It was lunch time by then, so we had lunch and put N down for his nap. D and I worked on a few "to do's" while N napped. (Thank goodness for nap time!!)

I read about an interesting 4th of July tradition in one of my toddler activity books, so I gave it a try this year. I made a birthday cake for the U.S. It's hard to explain to N why we celebrate the 4th. I thought this was a great way to explain it to him. He loves birthdays and he loves cake, so I made a birthday cake for us to eat in honor of our country's independence and I explained to him that our country is turning 233 years old... I'm not sure how much he understood, but we can talk about it every year and he will eventually get it. I debated between making a reduced fat strawberry cake and a Portillo's chocolate cake recipe...I went for the gold and made the chocolate cake. It was delicious!! The recipe is below.

Portillo's Chocolate Cake

1 betty crocker super moist chocolate butter recipe cake mix
3 large eggs
1 cup water (or coffee as it brings out the chocolate flavor)
1 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise (not light)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.Grease 2 round cake pans (or your choice of pan; cupcakes works great too).Beat all ingredients for 4 minutes (makes it fluffy).Pour into prepared pans.Follow baking instruction on box for your choice of pan, elevation, etc.Use toothpick to check for doneness.


N took a great nap today! Thank goodness because we had some fun plans for the evening. We got to Old Chicago right at 5:00 to eat supper in hopes of beating the rush. We made it just in time. There wasn't a wait and N was very well behaved at dinner. It's sooo nice when we take him out to eat and he's a good boy!! There were lots of activities planned for the 4th on the river front. There were supposed to be free inflatable toys to play on, however they were cancelled due to the rain. We didn't realized this until we got down to the river front. N was really excited to jump in the bouncy house... It was hard to tell him it got cancelled because he got pretty upset. Poor kiddo. There was still one activity set up that held up in the rain, so we played at that tent for quite a while before heading home. When we got home we sang Happy Birthday to America, blew out candles and ate the birthday cake. We watched the Macy's Fire work display on tv and played for a while. Then it was bed time... Past bed time actually... N had a hard time falling asleep. He was still playing in his room when D realized we could see a great fireworks display from one of the bedrooms upstairs. Since N was still awake the three of us sat together in that bedroom and watched the fireworks. Those were the most comforable, relaxing seats I've ever watched fireworks from. :) So, it's been a nice day. We got to do a lot of fun things and it was even more fun to have a toddler to share the day with. It's fun to have a little kid around to bring the kid out in us. :)

Happy 4th!