Our Vacation

This picture really isn't from our vacation. It's just Adam looking cute carrying Tiger around in his backpack.

Our vacation this year unfortunately only lasted about 4 days. We went back to my parents' house. My older sister was there with her kids and my youngest sister was there for a few days. My younger brother was there too since he lives in the same town.

For those of you who don't know... I'm from a teeny town in Southern Colorado called Manassa (about 1000 people and 1 mile square). Since Manassa was settled by Mormons in the 1880s it's a little bit like towns in Utah sometimes. We celebrate the 24th of July there too because that's when Brigham Young and other pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley.

So we celebrate with parades, rodeos, lots of food, a carnival, fireworks, etc.

Some people (like Doug) make fun of the parade because we watch it go through town and then back again on Friday morning. And then we watch it do the same thing on Saturday morning. However, I do point out to him that at least the parade has nice floats and stuff unlike the parade where he's from in Craig, CO, that has a bunch of guys driving their off-roading vehicles and a bunch of old guys driving their ancient tractors through town.

Here's a few pictures of the parade.

This is the Miss Pioneer court float. I admit I was once part of such a float. I feel like that Hope Floats movie where Sandra Bullock takes her daughter back to the little town she grew up in and her daughter asks her if this is where she was the "cream of corn."

1950s soda shop stuff seemed to be a bit of a theme this year. There were about 3 like that. This one was probably the best.

The alien one was a big hit with my kids also.

My kids also enjoyed the snowman.

The Little Mermaid one was our favorite. I didn't get a great picture of it, but the boat moved up and down, the dolphins were squirting water, bubbles were blowing out the back, etc. It was pretty impressive.

This is Alex enjoying an Otter Pop. We love it when local businesses or politicians throw candy, but the popsicles are especially nice on a warm day. (My grandpa, age 91, is sitting in the background.)

The carnival isn't exactly worth spending money on, but my dad always spoils the kids and gives them a few bucks to spend there. Mary was too busy playing with her cousins to ever go on any rides so she added her money to her stash. Doug took Alex to ride a few, but I had the Blackberry so we only got pictures of Adam riding. He had a great time at first. There was a train ride on a little track that he wanted at first, but then he saw the alligator train and wanted to ride that. It was really more of a little roller coaster so after a while he got tired of that and wanted off. We did do the carousel later, but it was too hard to try to take a picture while I was riding with him.

We did have a good time. Adam was sick a lot of the time and Alex got sick the last day with strep throat, but thanks to amoxicillin he's doing much better.