Family Traditions

Ah, July 4th, a time of family traditions.

Denise and I have been cognizant this year of many of the family traditions that we have had either growing up and that we incorporated, or ones that we have created over the last 21 years of our marriage. Family traditions are ways of distinguishing between families ("They must be Christiansens...") or different lines of the same family ("They must belong to those Fairchilds...") or even within the same family ("They are definately HIS kids!")

This last Memorial Day, Denise and I did what I called the "Fairchild Memorial Day" tradition -- we went and visited a number of graveyards in Illinois of Fairchild ancestors. Afterwards, we went to a park and played on a number of old, 50s era park toys (they are made out of what appears to be lead pipes, and they have uncovered screws and other sharp corners available for the horde to get all bunged up on. Reference picture with Denise and Anders), and we had a traditional family feast -- courtesy of Culvers. Todd is going to say "Wait, you missed the one BIG important tradition!" and he was right. So I saved it for July 4th.

July 4th dawned with nice blue skies, warm, not too hot and thankfully not too humid either. It was going to be a different July 4th for us since downtown Cedar Rapids was wiped out in a flood 3 weeks ago. I have spent much of the last weeks working 20 hour days salvaging the old office, preparing the new office and trying to keep production moving at OmniLingua Worldwide. So our plans were simple -- stay home, do a little grilling, and light the great assortment of fireworks that you can legally light in Iowa -- snakes and sparklers. Little did Denise know that there would be two new traditions added to the horde this year: water fight (there you go Todd!) and Greek barbecue.

I awoke early and made my plans:

Water fight check list

1. Hose that dad controls - done

Okay, so the water fight was prepared for. Now the Greek barbecue:

Greek barbecue check list:

1. New grill to grill with (no gas!)
2. "British sugar"
3. Pork
4. Lamb
5. Pork
6. Souvlaki
7. Feta cheese
8. Pork
9. Saganaki
10. Pork

This being Iowa (Pork: The Other White Meat(c)) lamb is hard to find, but after some diligent searching, I was able to procure some lamb chops for an exhorbitant price! Feta -- took the only two packages available that was "fresh feta" cheese (comes from sheep's milk, shhhh, don't tell the kids). Saganaki -- couldn't find anything appropriate to combust the cheese, so scratch that. And for other Greek substitutes, instead of these nice cured pork strips you can get in Greece, I had to make do with thick sliced Amana Bacon, and I used Italian Sausages (somehow I am going to have to figure out how to sneak in the appropriate meat!).

So armed with all the ingredients, and after putting the legs on the new grill wrong not once, but TWICE, we were ready to start the festivities. Enjoy the slide show.

Oh, and the water fight -- let's just say it somehow started when Denise "accidently" fell into the little kids pool, uhm, head first. Three broken truces and a little "rub-raw" from sliding around on the trampoline later, the water fight was ended ... for now ...