Courtesy of Pete Carty - Thanks.

After overdosing on Twilight Zones, the Jim and I traversed to a good ole cookout hosted by the Douglas Family.  En route, we stopped in at Food City to figure out what exactly we were going to contribute to the festivities.  It seems that every time I bring something to a cookout, there are always more exciting dishes that win out and my dishes are the ones not asked to dance.  Anyway…we laughed a lot since the doors to the Food City slid open and directly in our path was our good friends, The Dotsons, there on the same mission.  We both decided to take the “easy” way out and get some pre-made eats.  We ended up with the standard macaroni salad, spinach dip and chips (and I scored a flat iron steak – which is a secret bit of amazing eats).  We took our store-bought wares and headed to the cookout.  There were a LOT of people there, but not too much that you felt overwhelmed.  There was a ton of yummy treats to munch on and I apparently ate my share of beef items with glee.  Allison’s Dad cooked my flat iron, which rocked – and kudos to Phillip’s Jennifer for the Key Lime pie.  Being a Slovak-German prone to sun poisoning in 60 seconds or less, I stayed inside until the sun went down…we watched more Twilight Zone and then some “Stupid Videos” on demand.  There was talking and kids running and it was a true cookout feel.  Then, a bit of rain kicked up, but didn’t ruin the main event…SPARKLERS!  Okay, I know we didn’t hard-core it, but the kids are all under 10 years old and we didn’t want to spend our evening in the ER – or look like have the dolts on the “Stupid Videos” who decided to have fun with fireworks.  I have decided that next year, we need to contribute some of the old-time non threatening fireworks that I had when I was a kid: black snakes (remember those?), smoke bombs and colored sparklers.  Either way, we lit up and sparkled a lot.  Hence the lovely picture supplied by Please Feed the Monkeys…it was a evening of Love and Peace and FOOD amongst friends and it was wonderful.