Fourth Festivities!

So it is taking me awhile to get around to blogging about the 4th of July, I was hoping to wait for pictures, but you will have to read about this and use your imagination!!

The fourth of July for us starts on the 2nd of July...that is when you have to rub down the beef briskets with homemade rub (this is my part of the cooking process, I put together the rub and mop for the brisket). We smoked over 30 lbs of brisket this year! The briskets then "marinate" in the rub until the next evening...

On the third of July Matt and our friend Jonathan Kraatz start up the smokers and get ready to spend a night babysitting the briskets. This year the Dobo parents (Mark and Dianne), Busha (grandma Rose), and Andee and Bryan came down to help. What the men do... sit around talking by the fire pit consuming beverages, keeping the smoker fire going and mopping the brisket every 1 and a 1/2 hours.How the women help...get some sleep ;)

On the morning of the fourth we had a big breakfast and then packed up to go find our spot on the parade route. Now, we had to put out a tarp to "Reserve" our spot along the route the day before, and then to get a parking spot we needed to be at out spot an hour before the parade started!! Needless to say the St. Peter parade is a BIG deal. For being a town of 10,000 people, we have a parade that lasts 2 hours!! After the boys retrieved gobs of candy and consumed a couple of freezies each, we headed back to the house.

Back at the house, some other friends and family joined us and we gathered up all the food and waited for the brisket (and the pork roasts and ribs that had joined them in the early AM) to be taken off the smoker and cut. Like I said, I have no pictures but if you go to Jonathan's blog you can see a picture of the brisket. All I have to say is YUMMMMMMM!!

After we had thoroughly stuffed ourselves, we amused ourselves throughout the afternoon with yard games and water fights (many victims in this fight). Later on, most people came back through the "food line" for more brisket and sides.

At 9:30 we packed up and headed over to the fireworks, directly afterwards, the boys conked out in exhaustion while the adults took some time to have a fire and smores. It was a long and exhausting day- but full of great friends, family, food, and fun!!!