Happy Fourth Of July!

Hope everyone had an exciting and happy 4th of July!

 We had a lot of fun in my neck of the woods, with a friend and his kids, over at our home. We didn't buy fireworks this year since I'm such a cheapy and didn't want to spend money on something I'll burn up. My dogs freak out, so I usually spend the evening and the rest of the night under a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever, since they insist on climbing on me when the booms start. Anyhoo, we decided to take the money that we would normally spend on fireworks every year and divide it up three ways, then each of us could do what we wanted with the "fireworks" money. If one of us wanted to buy fireworks, we could. But, each of us decided to do something else with it. Our friends had some fireworks they purchased and decided to light them off in our neighborhood. Which was a lot of fun despite the fact we were fourth of July scrooges.

Our neighborhood usually has a ton of fireworks up and down the the street but this year, it seemed folks were out of town since it was a lot quieter.

 AND, my sons birthday is coming up, he'll be 14 on the 8th, so we celebrate his birthday on the 8th and on the 4th. He gets two birthdays!

Per his request he wanted a chocolate oreo cookie cake so I came up with this and it was delicious! Actually, this was mostly his idea.

We don't care for the thick frostings on cakes so I usually use Cool Whip. Have you ever tried it? I won't go back to regular frosting.

 For this cake, we made a devils food chocolate box cake and added crushed up oreos to the whip. We used two sleeves of the cookies and crushed them really well then added it to the Cool Whip. It's gets pretty  messy but, I love to play with mah food. So..there ya have it. 

Frost that cake just like you would with regular frosting.

Top it off with a few oreos. Refrigerate until you want to eat that bad boy.

It was deeee licious!

 My husband took off Thursday so it gave him an extra long weekend but I put him to work.

We've been debating about putting trees up on the hill behind our house or a fence for privacy reasons. A fence was going to cost a lot more than some fast growing trees, so, we picked the trees.

Here in the Northwest, the dirt is really hard and clay like, it's called hardpan and it can be about as hard as concrete. My husband is digging holes in this stuff. I tried, but the incline is close to 45 degrees and the dirt is so hard, my knees and ankles couldn't do it. My hubby is a runner and a cyclist so this was not problem for him. I'm a big baby.

And NOT only can he dig holes in horrible dirt at a 45 degree angle, but he can make one of the best apple pies on earth.

Kid. You. Not. 

The best. ON. EARTH.

I do have to interject that my son and I peeled the apples and sliced them. 

Did ya BBQ? I think that's the thing to do on the fourth since everybody's grill was fired up. After we ate we played a fun Star Wars Saga role playing game.

Our friend, who's a genius and a geek through and through (think of Sheldon on  Big Bang, give him a funny personality and that's our friend (and he has six kids) ) he was the Game Master and had created this particular game. 

So much fun. 

We all ended the night with a bang!! It was a great time.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy fourth of July!