Thursday, July 10, 2008

Is This a Parade?

I thought that after the 4th I would have all kinds of cute pictures of my boys doing 4th of
July-ish stuff. Here is the tragic truth.
Josh and I are scrooges when it comes to pretty much every holiday. For the last almost 4 years when a holiday has approached we just say, "Oh, the boys are still too young, they won't know any different." Well, Will is almost 4 and so I decided that it is time that we start celebrating holidays as they are meant to be celebrated, or rather endured in some situations.
We began the 4th of July with a planned father/son bike ride. That was a success.
Next, we were headed to the Franklin City Parade. Will didn't really know what a parade was, so I enthusiastically told him all about the fun things he would see. "There will be fire trucks and police men riding motorcycles. You'll see horses, and decorated cars, and even see something called floats! and the best part, people will just throw candy at you--that's right, free candy!" I talked it up so much that I even started to get excited. What a stinkin' let down!
Here is the sad reality. There were no floats, no policemen, you can forget the horses, and the biggest disappointment, no candy. Instead we got what seemed like random people driving down the road in a cool, fast car, nope! driving down the road in their family sedan. In between the line of Mercury Sables, were more random people that were entertaining us? Not really, just handing out fliers for the businesses. Help me understand something, will you? I realize that we were at the end of the parade so it's natural we got the tired, sorry lookin' folks that just wanted out of the sun, but how is it they estimated with great accuracy to be sure to not run out of business ads, but somehow grossly underestimated how much candy they would need to get to the end of the parade. So...here is the parade in a nutshell.
ME: "Look, boys! Yay! Wave hello (even though nobody was waving at them) Clap! Hooray!
JOSH: "Oh, look guys! another car!"
ME: "Oh, look Will, that lady has something for you. Say thank you"
WILL: "What is it?"
ME: "Oh wow Will, you're so lucky! a refrigerator magnet, and a pink paper!"

Here is the best part about kids though. As you can see from my punctuation above, we tried our darndest to make those boys think they were having the time of their lives, and the funny thing is, I think that they probably thought they were. Kids are great.

The best part of this whole experience came the next day. We were playing in front of the house, and our neighbor drove by, and I said, "Will, wave hello." and Will said, "Oh, like a parade?"

2 comments:

H. said...

well I'm glad you had a fun fourth anyway...even if the parade wasn't so great. I hope you don't mind, I've linked you to my blog so I'll remember to check yours out more often. If that's not okay, just say so.

Anonymous said...

I am waiting in great anticipation for a new entry! It has been so long since the parade! I feel like I hardly know you anymore :(