Independence Celebration

I never know where or how we will celebrate our nation’s birth from year to year, and as a consequence, it varies a great deal.  This year was by no means an exception.  We ended up with some college friends in Colorado and they kind of took us in hand and included us in all their plans.  We left early in the morning to go to the Fourth of July parade in the next town over.  We had to get there a bit early to get seats on the sidewalk, and then, of course, all the shady spots were already taken.  It was a nice day, though, and it wasn’t too hot unless you were in the direct sunlight for a long time.

Here we all are, lined up in our chairs.

The lady who lived in the house behind where we were sitting was rather inconsiderate and kept asking us to move down, for what reason we never did figure out, since no one sat in the place we had vacated.  As the parade progressed, she kept spraying the parade participants with the garden hose, and drawing the return fire of the ones who had fire hoses and water guns.  By the end of the parade, we were all soaked, since we had been directly in the crossfire.  Oh, well. 

Here are the girls with Jack, the pastor’s new puppy – he really was so cute!

The guys – waiting for the parade to begin

The parade began with the flags and the firemen, carrying a banner honoring the 19 firemen who lost their lives earlier fighting the forest fires in Arizona.  It was a sobering reminder that people are still giving their lives for our safety.  There are nineteen families who are grieving a terrible loss this week.

Rural parades are so very different from the big city parades.  There tend to be a lot of old vehicles, farm tractors, and makeshift floats on wagons.  Definitely not the Macy’s parade, but very fun and appealing in a down-home sort of way.

The kids thought this bicycle was totally awesome.  The adults wondered among ourselves how one mounted and dismounted this vehicle without personal injury…

There were also horses – lots of horses.  This is the local rodeo royalty.

And you thought Santa lived at the North Pole!  :)

More horses and cowboys

Another cool truck – Josiah wants one of these

A huge tractor hauling a giant, flag-painted bale of hay

The local tractor dealership squadron

And of course, there was a lot of candy.  Most of ours got soaked, though, thanks to the exuberant hose-toting woman behind us.  Makes for a sticky mess.

Good place to keep your spare candy!

This is way too much sugar for my kids!

Don’t they look happy about it, though?

I love this picture.  In a way, it reminds me of one of those activity book pictures that says “Which one does not belong?”  Daniel didn’t have a red shirt, and he didn’t want to wear his hat.  Love the independence of this picture!

Later, at the rodeo grounds, my kids put on their own rodeo, complete with bucking broncos…

Look at that ornery face!

My cowgirl wanna-be. 

Ride that bronc!  I want to say here, that it is extremely difficult to take pictures of bronc riding and bull riding.  You have 8 seconds to get a shot of a wildly moving target – if they can stay on that long!  I was not able to get any of the bull riding for this reason – none of them was able to stay on for even 8 seconds!

Barrel racing – fastest time of the night was 17.78 seconds

And of course, after the rodeo was over, there was a pretty good fireworks display!

All in all, we had a wonderful time together, enjoying our freedom and celebrating the great nation that God has given us.  God Bless America!