On the Fourth of July, we try to do a lot of activities that include our family and friends; cooking out, covered dish dinner, making ice cream in the old fashioned crank freezer, or having a watermelon cutting. These activities can be enjoyed by the young and old.
If we choose to make ice cream, those who have freezers bring the ice cream mixture in their freezer container. Those who don't have freezers bring bags of ice, the hostess provides the salt. It is best to have about 5 or 6 freezers, with a different flavor in each. It is so much fun to watch the small kids try to crank the freezer! Most of them have never done this before, and look forward to making ice cream.
Everybody brings lawn chairs, or a quilt. We look for the shade, moving as it changes during the day! It is a good excuse to tell the funny stories about family and friends, and relieve them each year. You know the kids are listening when they beg for the story about when "Great Aunt Nettie sat down on the couch, and sat on a crochet hook and had to go to the ER, and the hook was stuck in her girdle! " Oh my, the kids 3 generations down are still laughing about that story!
When there are a lot of little children, tell them to bring their tricycles, wagons, or bikes with them. Provide crepe paper streamers, flags, horns, whistles, ribbons,cardboard and clothes pins for the bike wheels, and what ever Fourth Decorations you can find at the $ Store. Let them decorate their "vehicles" and have a parade down the street. Oh my how they love to do that. Some of them even decorated the dog last year!
Water balloons are fun for the kids and the dads, too! It is usually so hot in July that it feels good to get wet a little. If you want to, you can get inexpensive squirt guns at the $ stores, too.
As for the watermelon feast. You know there has to be a seed spitting contest, too! Give small prizes, or find Medals at the $ Store for the winner. Who says that fun has to be expensive?
By Barbara Petty in Knoxville, TN
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I picked up this Uncle Sam hat in the dollar store. They had matching ice buckets, so it dawned on me that putting the two items together would make a nice presentation for the Fourth of July!