Singing A New Song: Fried Catfish & Hush Puppies

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and enjoyed the three days weekend!! I enjoyed it thoroughly with my precious family. Though last night I felt like some allergies are coming on and today too. Well, we did it again! Since I knew Danner's family there's been a tradition made by our late Papa. One year he had a crave for catfish so they had catfish for 4th of July that year and it stuck. Though our Papa passed away last October, we carried on the tradition without him. We missed him and know that he was looking down on us, probably telling us what we were doing wrong with the catfish :-) but we managed to fried the catfish, chicken, and hush puppies and of course everything was delicious!! Danner made oatmeal raisins and chocolate chip cookies, another thing Papa always made when he was on earth, to carry on the family tradition. He did such a good job and everyone was very proud of him!! We brought fresh corn on the cob and Allison had a few ears and I did the same. There's nothing beats fresh corn on the cob on a summer evening! After lunch, I was able to put Allison down for nap and of course I fell asleep too. It was very much needed for both of us. When we got up from our nap played in the backyard of our Mema's house. We played the family game of croquet which I'm so awfully bad at. It was so terrible that I had to quit and I'm usually the competitive one. We played outside till 9:00 and all loaded in our vehicles to go see the fireworks display at the air port. We were quite disappointed at what was suppose to be bigger and better than the previous years, but I guess at least there were fireworks on the 4th, right? We all slept well of course! Monday came along and we took Allison to her first swim lession which she did wonderfully! She enjoyed it while I was sitting far away wondering if she was good or whether she was listening to her teacher. Danner was there beside me telling me how good she is because he used to be the swim instructor back in high school years. Our little baby is growing up! Watching her walking away with total strangers and doing what she was told was so different for me. I'm so proud of her and sad at the same time that she's no longer an infant that needs me all the time but that she is her own person now with decisions of her own to make. We wrapped up the afternoon eating leftovers at Mema's house then a nap. When we woke up we went over to Bentonville to visit my family. My mom makes the best "Pho" in the world and we filled our tummies up with another delicious meal. Allison had so much fun there with her grandparents, aunts and uncle that she didn't want to go home. :-(. She had to come with us, of course.

Here are some of the pictures from that day:

Posing with Daddy and a garden fresh cherry tomato