Boring photos and more celebration
Sigh. We haven't done anything photo-worthy lately. Nor blog-worthy either. Except I am celebrating today. I mentioned in a previous blog post that I finished my Creative Writing class, and today I got my grades. A! Yay! I am celebrating by having Jim pick up some chocolate for me at the store.
I did mention that I have boring photos for you to peruse. Nothing exciting, as I said. Feel free to go somewhere else for fabulous pictures.
Sunday was the local parade capping the several-days'-long civic celebration of our little slice of Minnesota. And every parade worth its salt needs a marching band. And our district's high school supplied that band. And in that band marched our Paul.
The parade started at 1 p.m. We stationed ourselves near the end of the parade route and the parade didn't get to us until 1:40! Oh well. Fortunately we had brought along some reading material to keep us all occupied for that time.
Here are Jim and Matt watching for the start of the parade.
Hayley found some friends at the parade and preferred to sit with them rather than her family.
Finally, the parade! And it proved to be a bounty of candy! Here is Matt vying for treasure thrown from the firetruck.
It seems that in order to get people to come to a parade these days, the parade participants must provide candy. Matt collected nearly a Halloween's worth of tootsie rolls, lollipops, taffy, hard candies, and other such sugary tidbits, as well as a bottle of water, a t-shirt, reams of coupons and two freezer pops.
Then we had the pleasure of seeing Paul march. It was much easier to spot him in this parade than at the Memorial Day parade because they didn't have to wear the marching band hats. We yelled at him to show him our support but he chose to ignore us.
Couple of things I noticed about the parade:
1) Is it just this parade or have all parades now become one long string of advertisements? For a parade that lasted an hour and a half, I spotted only a handful of parade entrants that would have had no advertising agenda--the marching band, the police force (who actually had to stop during the parade and tend to a lost child!), the descendants of Dan Patch (the namesake of our town celebration and a google search will quickly tell you why these descendants aren't into advertising, even if Dan Patch himself was), the finders of the horseshoe, and the Dairy Princesses of some small Minnesota towns roundabout these parts. Oh and the library. Of course the library was in some small part advertising, but since I LOVE the library and know the head librarian personally, I won't count the library as having advertising motives. Everything else was designed as a moving commercial. And there weren't even any good floats. The only thing remotely parade-float like was this:
A advertisement for pest control services. A giant inflatable mosquito.
2) This was the reverse of Halloween. The kids just sat there and some people dressed up in scary costumes (mostly clowns) walked past and handed out the candy.
3)I ALWAYS pick the wrong side of the street to watch my child march. I made sure we were on the left side of the street because Paul was on the left side during the Memorial Day parade (and we were on the right side for that). And of course, he switched sides. Just call me Wrong Side Shoebox Princess. I also have a knack for wrongly guessing the gender of pending children.
We did enjoy watching the many incarnations of the Zuhrah Shriners (on motorcycles, on go-carts, on little car/boats, and in steel drum band forms) do their stunt formations. The motorcycles took up the whole dang block doing their riding patterns. I enjoyed watching them weave in and out of each other on their huge motorcycles. And these are not young men either. Oh, to be that proficient at handling a potentially dangerous machine at that age!
I did mention that I have boring photos for you to peruse. Nothing exciting, as I said. Feel free to go somewhere else for fabulous pictures.
Sunday was the local parade capping the several-days'-long civic celebration of our little slice of Minnesota. And every parade worth its salt needs a marching band. And our district's high school supplied that band. And in that band marched our Paul.
The parade started at 1 p.m. We stationed ourselves near the end of the parade route and the parade didn't get to us until 1:40! Oh well. Fortunately we had brought along some reading material to keep us all occupied for that time.
Here are Jim and Matt watching for the start of the parade.
Hayley found some friends at the parade and preferred to sit with them rather than her family.
Finally, the parade! And it proved to be a bounty of candy! Here is Matt vying for treasure thrown from the firetruck.
It seems that in order to get people to come to a parade these days, the parade participants must provide candy. Matt collected nearly a Halloween's worth of tootsie rolls, lollipops, taffy, hard candies, and other such sugary tidbits, as well as a bottle of water, a t-shirt, reams of coupons and two freezer pops.
Then we had the pleasure of seeing Paul march. It was much easier to spot him in this parade than at the Memorial Day parade because they didn't have to wear the marching band hats. We yelled at him to show him our support but he chose to ignore us.
Couple of things I noticed about the parade:
1) Is it just this parade or have all parades now become one long string of advertisements? For a parade that lasted an hour and a half, I spotted only a handful of parade entrants that would have had no advertising agenda--the marching band, the police force (who actually had to stop during the parade and tend to a lost child!), the descendants of Dan Patch (the namesake of our town celebration and a google search will quickly tell you why these descendants aren't into advertising, even if Dan Patch himself was), the finders of the horseshoe, and the Dairy Princesses of some small Minnesota towns roundabout these parts. Oh and the library. Of course the library was in some small part advertising, but since I LOVE the library and know the head librarian personally, I won't count the library as having advertising motives. Everything else was designed as a moving commercial. And there weren't even any good floats. The only thing remotely parade-float like was this:
A advertisement for pest control services. A giant inflatable mosquito.2) This was the reverse of Halloween. The kids just sat there and some people dressed up in scary costumes (mostly clowns) walked past and handed out the candy.
3)I ALWAYS pick the wrong side of the street to watch my child march. I made sure we were on the left side of the street because Paul was on the left side during the Memorial Day parade (and we were on the right side for that). And of course, he switched sides. Just call me Wrong Side Shoebox Princess. I also have a knack for wrongly guessing the gender of pending children.
We did enjoy watching the many incarnations of the Zuhrah Shriners (on motorcycles, on go-carts, on little car/boats, and in steel drum band forms) do their stunt formations. The motorcycles took up the whole dang block doing their riding patterns. I enjoyed watching them weave in and out of each other on their huge motorcycles. And these are not young men either. Oh, to be that proficient at handling a potentially dangerous machine at that age!
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