I would write July 5, 2006, and I say "July fifth, two thousand six." I don't say "July the fifth". If I say the day, I don't usually say the year: "Wednesday, July fifth".
Americans also often write the date like this: 07/05/06 (month, day, year). This is slightly different from many other places in the world which usually put day, month, year. Americans are aware of this, and some Americans choose to write day, month, year, especially those who have been exposed to the abbreviation system in other countries. If you write 31/07/06 it's pretty clear that you wrote day, month, year, because there's no month 31, but if it's 05/07/06 it could be ambiguous. On official forms, the blanks usually have labels that tell you what they want you to write. Month, day, year is still the more common format.
Sometimes I write the date 5 July 2006. This is not a common American way to write the date, but it resolves ambiguity, because when I write the name of the month you know that the number is the number of the day, not the number of the month. I picked up this practice from my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which uses this format in its records.