Parade

Ainsley has been driving me crazy lately asking when we were going to go to a parade. We've gone to our cities 'Dairy Days' parade every summer since we moved here and she's become accustomed to it. This year we weren't going to be able to make it to that parade because we get to hang out with Mel's family that night....which we are super excited for by the way! We actually could have taken her family to the awesome event but apparently a certain uncle of Ainsley's (who will remain anonymous) has a severe dislike or phobia of parades (I'm not sure which :).
So this year, in an attempt to meet our yearly parade quota we ventured outside our city limits and went to a neighboring cities parade and celebration. We had a lot of fun. The weather was perfect. We didn't really have to fight crowds or traffic. We got there about and hour and a half before the parade, staked out a spot in the shade, and then wandered around looking at vendor sights, watched some entertainers, and ate treats.

Then the fun began. The kids really liked the parade. Ains would dance every time a cheer leading or dance group would come by. She has a new, self labeled, 'pop star' dance that is hilarious. I was trying to get her to dance as this float went by...but instead I got some great footage of Owen shakin' his booty.

Owen really enjoyed the first part of the parade. He was very polite and would wave good-bye to every one that passed. And while Ainsley liked the first part too, I think her favorite was the end because this was a water parade. Owen and I got drenched with the one of the first fire trucks, and then Owen made it known that he wanted no more of it!
Ains however stood on the side of the road waving her hands in a 'bring it on' type fashion, loving every minute of it! It was mostly men and teenage boys spraying the water and most of them would look at Ains and pass her over in an attempt to be polite. So John went out with her and taught her to yell,"spray me" while waving her arms. This increased the amount of water coming her way significantly.

The kids had fun and it was a great festival. So now we will have to decide which event we will be going to next year.

A side note about the parade......

There was one bizarre thing about this parade. People were wandering around the street during the ENTIRE parade! At first I thought it was a little weird that the streets still had so many people walking up and down the middle of the street right before the parade was supposed to start. I kept waiting for the streets to clear but they never did! I've never been to a parade before where people just traveled up and down the street (not in cars of course) at will in the middle of a parade. I was really bothered by this so I took a few pictures while we were sitting on the curb of the people passing in front of us while we were watching the parade. At one point a family wanted to cross the street just where we were sitting and so they just stood in front of us for a few minutes waiting for a break to cross the street. I'm still not quite over it. Hence, my random slide show of the ridiculous amounts of people walking around during the parade. (I have about 10 more pictures I could have added to the slide show but I quit adding them because the pictures were taking forever to load and I thought, "Who is actually going to sit and watch an entire slide show of random people. Enjoy!