July 3rd: Friday Focus

 

Lakeland celebrates Independence Day on the night before, with fireworks at our beautiful Lake Mirror.  It's called our Red, White, and Kaboom!  There can be 30,000 or more people there.  I have great memories of fireworks with my parents and little brother at a city park in my childhood hometown.  BUT, I have never been moved to brave the crowds and parking woes by trying to get to Lake Mirror on the night of the third.  I will find some to watch on TV instead!

I am starting my holiday weekend by having an early dinner with a long-time blogging friend whom I have yet to meet in person!!  Joyce and her hubs are in Tampa for a wedding and have asked to meet for dinner tonight!!  I'm so happy that they are taking a couple of hours out of their weekend to meet with me!!  There will be photos!!  Joyce is the Wednesday Hodgepodge hostess and also blogs at From This Side of The Pond.  We've been blogging friends for many years, and I am so excited to meet her and her hubby!

Check out the tab above (if you are seeing my blog on your computer), and you will see some 27 blogging friends I've been blessed to meet in person through the years.  I started blogging in 2007.  I have been quite deliberate about meeting fellow bloggers, and my Joe actually enjoyed being part of it.  Quite a few of us actually visit often now!  If your picture isn't included, it can be!!  Let's meet!!

So, an exciting evening ahead for me.  Check back for my Monday Musings post for photos and fun!  I'm attending the Mas Verde potluck at the clubhouse on Saturday, followed by a decorated golf cart parade.  Our HOA is doing the hamburgers and hot dogs.  I'm making a pasta salad as my contribution.  I hope the rain holds off for the parade.

To all who are celebrating, Happy Independence Day weekend!  

Peace and Hugs!

Our National Anthem  

--Songwriters: David Martin Frank / Francis Scott Key / John Stafford Smith

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,

’Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a Country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!

Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto - “In God is our trust,”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.