Small town Parade!

One of the greatest things about living in the small town that I live in here is that they have not just one parade, but TWO every year. The first parade of the year is during the Parker Country Festival and that was today. They have another parade at Christmas time and it is a Carriage parade with lots of horses.

So today was our parade and I couldn't remember seeing what time the parade started anywhere. So I hopped on line and found that the start time was 10:30am. Whew! I had over an hour.

DH decided that he should really go to MIL's house to do her yardwork, so I suggested that I take Darly to the parade while he did that. DH wisely suggested that he could drop us off and then we would just have to walk home. Not a bad thing. We normally park about 1/2 the way and walk in. It's less than two miles from the farthest point back to our house...although we did walk through all the vendor booths...so give us another 1/2 a mile or so of walking total.

We told Darly that DH was going to drop us off at the parade. She figured out before we even left that we were either going to have to be there a long time (waiting for DH) or have to walk back. Smart girl! I didn't tell her that the waiting for DH thing wasn't an option.

So I wake Darly up and have her get ready to go. We thought that we would be able to pull into this one area to drop us off, but they had that area blocked to prevent folks from trying to park there. So DH did a U-turn and dropped us off at the end of Mainstreet where the parade was setting up. We freaked out a kid who was helping the police keep folks from trying to turn onto the blocked road...but as I got out, I told him that he was just dropping us off and the kid was fine.

Darly & I walked to the parade starting point and found a good place to watch. It was a very good parade and we got TONS of candy...I forgot to bring a bag so I was trying to figure out where to put all the candy. After the parade we went to the bank and asked if they had any bags (which I know they did because I saw others with them!) and they were happy to give us a bag and asked us to come back for a chance at the money grab (put you in a cage w/ a fan blowing around money and all the money you catch goes into your new account you open with them.) yeah right!

After that we headed to the vendor booths. We saw at least three chiropractors, bunches of insurance sales (one gave out free sunscreen!), two Airbonne booths, and tons of other stuff. I ended up walking right past most of it. We got Darly's face painted for free - it didn't look all that great and it didn't last at all, but what do ya want for free? Darly was happy.

Instead of eating the WAY overpriced fair food we walked over to McDonalds and joined the very packed air conditioned room of all the smart folks. After that we stopped by the pet store and visited lots of very cute puppies and a very talkative Meezer cat. (I bet his future owner won't get much sleep! LOL!) Darly fell in love with lots of cuties. There was this one puppy (Shih Tzu or Lhasa Apso) who was flat on his back, front paws at his sides with his head in the food dish. It was so cute.

We then checked out the Beadery Cafe. They have a coffee bar & where you can make bead crafts. The first thing I noticed was that they had the very best radio station playing. hee hee I said "Oh listen (to Darly) they have a really Great Radio Station playing!" and the owner's daughter says "Oh you listen to KLOVE?" and I said "All the Time!" and then she started asking me about a contest they had just recently had there. She was cute...she had tried to win, but never got through. Her question would have been too easy though...she said she wanted to know the second line to a song. You were supposed to stump the DJs. Oh well.

Next stop... Ice Cream at Baskin Robbins. We both got sherbert. Rainbow for Darly & I got Lime Daquiri Ice. Very tart & refreshing. We checked out the rides but didn't see any that we wanted to spend that kind of money on, so we headed for home.

Darly got tired so we rested at a Church's picnic area that is about 1/2 way to our house (very nice) I took off my shoes and cooled my feet in the shade. Then we headed home. She might be napping...I could go for that.

Wonder how Dh is doing? He's supposed to be mowing a yard.