Life is a parade

Sat was like hopping into a time machine.

We woke up, got ready and walked over to watch the parade, it was pretty fun actually. It was hot, but survivable. We had cousins in the parade, some friends, some students. We made sure to cheer for whomever was walking by. Usually this consisted of the word "yay..." followed by whoever they were, or woo hoo.. etc etc. i.e. "woohoo 2nd ward", "nice job American Fork Band", "woohoo Pecos Bill".... and so forth.

Sometimes it was difficult to decide exactly what to cheer, we got more creative as the day went on... Kristen laughed at what I thought were obvious cheers for the different royalties that went by. "Yay Queen" was typical, or "Yay beauty" I tried "congratulations for being prettier than your competition!".

As the cheer leading squad walked by I said (much much quieter) "Yay early onset anorexia!"

Most of the parade participants threw candy. It's amazing how excited little kids get when you throw really cheap candy at them, Costco threw rolls of toilet paper, BRILLIANT!

Different people were handing out balloons, I couldn't get a balloon handler to come our way no matter what I tried. "woohoo ballons!" Next time I tried more direct "GIVE ME A BALLOON" nothing, "some guy came by running for office, "Buy my vote with a cheap balloon!" didn't do the trick either. No balloon for the day, but a car wash guy gave me a chamois they were handing out.

Kristen and Angela loudly sang Smokey the Bear's theme song as he went by... that got a wave...

The wolverine mascot came by, I cheered especially loud!

Towards the end some boat float came by porting different characters from different eras in costume on it, one had long white hair and a long beard, wearing biblical robes, Angela shouted out "Moses you're my favorite prophet" Than Nicki pointed out that they were on a ship labeled "Bound for the promised land" and he was standing next to Nephi, so "Lehi" was a more likely guess than Moses!

We laughed really hard as we made observation after impersonation after observation of how Moses wasn't exactly known for being a sailor, and how just about any sea captain would probably not have appreciated Moses's best known powers of dividing the water, not very helpful on any watercraft. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh

We walked by the park on the way home where they had pony rides, cotton candy and funnel cakes, crafts for the kids, lots of inflatable slides and portable rock climbing walls and live music. We skipped the rock climbing wall, unfortuneatly the mechanical bull wasn't going yet or I would've risked some pain trying it out, we didn't think they would appreciate us asking for a pony ride, ("they" being the ponies) We had to get a funnel cake. We didn't stay too long as we were already kind of hot and carrying a bunch of chairs. We ran into different neighbors who all said "hi" of course, it was nice and homey.

Then we went up to a family bar-b-que thrown because Natalie and James were visiting with their triplet boys and their daughter before moving from MI even farther away east to Boston. It was very low key, nice though. Natalie is my new hero as she brought me a couple of leaves from MI. I am trying to figure the best place of honor for them.


Let's all pause and dream of trees, rivers and waterfalls, and lakes...and trees......

Here's a pic of Kristen and I in MI last time we went to visit my fam