Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July! 🙂

Do you celebrate the 4th? We don't go crazy, but we do like to remember the day in some way. Some years we gather with friends and watch fireworks, but this weekend we have a lot going on, so I think we will just stay home and have a quiet celebration this year.

I will boil some potatoes and eggs and stir together a potato salad to go with our hamburgers. I will put some beans in the crockpot for baked beans, and maybe make a fun cake! 🙂 Maybe we will eat outside in the cool air.

Here is one of my favorite quotes about Independence Day by John Quincy Adams:

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever."

--Adams wrote this in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776.

(source: http://christianity.about.com/od/independenceday/a/foundingfathers.htm )

I have always loved the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described her childhood revelation on what Independence Day really means...

"The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king.
She thought Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. "Our father's God, author of liberty-" The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free."

~Little Town On the Prairie

Oh that society today would take responsibility to 'make themselves be good'. This alone - taking responsibility for our own actions - would solve so many current problems.

So tell me. How do you celebrate the Fourth? Are you proud to be an American? 🙂