Celebrating Independence

Ah, sweet independence! Once again, the 4th of July arrived, bringing with it a wonderful sense of patriotism and intense Virginia heat!! My goodness! This was my first Independence Day living in the south (at least since I was a wee little one) and it certainly lived up to my expectations of what the 4th of July should be all about! A little chocolate and fireworks and a lot of history relived! Being the history buff that I am, I was in all my glory! Glory and sweat to be certain. Lots of sweat. Ugh, it was hot. But it was everything the day should be! 

We kicked off the celebrations the night before with only the necessities: S'mores and fireworks. God bless Virginia for letting us set off fireworks in our backyard! Maine was never so kind...

At this point in the night, I was missing my old backyard in Maine and our amazing fire pit... The Coleman stove just didn't want to light and so we resorted to candles. Not perfect, but certainly a memory to be made! 

There are no words to express the amount of fun we had at Thomas Jefferson's summer place in Poplar Forest. They put on the most amazingly festive day... Like a small scale Williamsburg! We were all very impressed! It was everything Independence Day should be! 

The silversmith - fascinating woman!

At 1:30 the fife and drum "band" and color guard kicked off our pledge of allegiance, national anthem and reading of the Declaration of Independence - just amazing!!  

These men were simply precious. I wanted to hug each one.

The reading of the Declaration of Independence! I wanted to cheer the entire time :)

Strom was in his glory at this point. Go figure... a soldier and his love for weapons!

It was love at first sight!

The blacksmith

The flax man... Let me just say that we are spoiled today with our ease of clothing purchasing. Good grief... It took acres of flax just to make a single garment of clothing! Ugh and the work it took just to make it workable! 

He's not sleeping, by the way. It was very interesting!

Our precious friends! 

I do love that man!

I did mention it was hot, right? We're talking melting hot. To the point that we sought some much-needed shelter from the sun to replenish ourselves. It was draining to say the least!! 

We are as different as night and day, but we're God-given friends....more like sisters! :)

This was me expressing my dislike for the heat!! :)

We tried our hand at writing with a quill pen! I must say that I enjoyed it! But holy cow does it take patience!! Major props to our founders for so beautifully writing our Declaration of Independence! ;)

And off he went to start the car for us! In the north we start our cars in advance to warm them up... down here we start them up in advance to cool them down. Such a change up! But very much needed! 

What an amazing time!! We couldn't say enough good things about our time at Poplar Forest! Definitely worth the sun and sweat! A wonderful way to celebrate our nation's birthday!! 

Coming soon: Our sunset hike to watch the fireworks!