4th of July

Happy Belated 4th of July everyone! I hope yours was as wonderful and restful as ours!

Jennifer, Kevin and Hudson came into town on Wednesday, though Hudson left us on Thursday to spend 10 days with his Gigi (Kevin's Mom) in South Georgia. Apparently swimming and jet skiing with his cousin is more fun than Marietta, go figure. But Jen and Kevin were with us through Sunday. My office was closed Thursday and Friday, so I got spoiled with 4 straight days with my little family! Just 4 days of nice relaxing quality time together. No rushing, no plans, just hanging out, eating well and drinking wine...not to shabby if you ask me. Kevin, a relatively new but enthusiastic runner, ran the Peachtree Road Race for the first time on Friday morning. Coming in 2485 out of 55,000...I am sorry I think that is pretty damn impressive! And he got the super-coveted T-shirt as a reward for all the sweating!

After that we had a very relaxing July 4th, watching TV and napping. We didn't even watch any fireworks, except the ones on TV, and celebrated our nation's independance with a mexican dinner at Nuevo Laredo. American, no, but if you've ever eaten there, you can't blame us for doing that.

On Saturday the women in my family, sans my Mom, had a mini-Strawberry Jamboree! That is what we started calling it last year when we get together to make homemade strawberry jam. My mom and Aunt Mimi's parents often made homemade strawberry jam in the summertime from the strawberries that grew near their home, a long-standing family tradition. One that Aunt Mimi and Amanda have diligently kept up. But the Murphey girls never did learn how, so last year when Mom got sick and we realized how much we had never done that we had always wanted to, we committed to making this an annual event. It was a fun afternoon, messy as hell but it sure smelled good in there!