fourth of july. pancakes and social anxiety.

i hope all you nice folks and a fun fourth of july! we a pretty crazy day. since james had the day off, we started the day off with a family pancake breakfast:

i was really excited about this, i havent had pancakes in MONTHS (partly because of a mystery stomach problem and partly because of this whole gluten-free thing), and i really wanted to try a different use for this mix. i didnt have quite enough mix left for the pancake recipe on the box so i had to kind of eyeball the liquid ingredients, but they came out looking and tasting like pancakes, which is more than i can say for a lot of gluten-free products. since this mix worked pretty well for pancakes and cookies, i definitely think well keep it on hand for special occasions. 

after breakfast we went to a really great barbeque/picnic at grace carson opc (its not our regular church, but a smaller, nearby church that our congregation is helping to establish so they tend to have overlapping events). we had tons of fun, swinging on swings:

eating watermelon and other picnic treats:

playing cornhole:

and alice was OBSESSED with playing in the sprinklers:

 after the picnic we went home for a nap and a costume change (i had forgotten to bring alice a bathing suit). and after nap we headed over to the beach for another party. and it was a really, really great party, with really great music and really great food on a really great day at a really great house on the strand. seriously. heres a picture of james and alice and alices friend leona having fun on a trampoline next to the ocean:

i mean, how great is that? 

the thing is, even though this was a party of mostly church people, it was a REALLY big party, which means it was loud and crowded and me REALLY anxious and uncomfortable. ive always had problems with social anxiety, but this party was particularly tough, because well, i dont have a church clique. i dont have regular group of friends, i mostly just hang out with my family. and no matter how hard i tried to mingle and be part of conversations, i just didnt have anything relevant to contribute, so i spend most of the evening with alice, james, and my mom. it wasnt a bad time, it was just really, really difficult and stressful. 

we ended up leaving before the beach fireworks started, because we were all getting tired and we had a LONG walk back to our car. this wasnt that big of a deal since none of us is particularly into fireworks, but as we drove home we noticed that there were probably TWICE as many (giant, totally illegal, exploding-in-the-sky-type) fireworks going on in our neighborhood than at the beach, so we still got fireworks. 

over all id say this was a successful holiday, what did you do for fourth of july?