I’ve never heard Claudia laugh harder than when I told her Kanye West had announced he was running for President. (And was a little surprised that, if Claudia knew who Kanye was, why Béla didn’t.)

No sparklers at the Acme and the kids said they didn’t really care. These were the only lights we saw tonight:

Our approach towards holidays is to not try to shove all the ritual food into the second half of the day and pretend you are obliged to eat “normal” breakfasts or lunches; spread it out. The first foods anyone ate today were hotdogs and marshmallows cooked in the yard in a fire.

Béla got to work with two new kitchen challenges today: phyllo, for spanakopita:

And then, clearly because I was not getting to it in as timely a fashion as he wanted to eat it, he helped make the crumb topping for two crumbles, a blueberry and a cherry.

We cooked, we laughed, we ate, we talked, we watched TV. We did whatever we felt like. Claudia played Sims because she had the holiday expansion pack and needed to see what Independence Day looked like, but then someone had a curse put on them and turned green every three days and Claudia had to cure their disease. (That hit a bit close to home.)

It was good. They are happy. Bathing a cat tomorrow.