4th of July

For our 4th of July Casey and I decided to drive 45 minutes Southeast of us to the small town of Milton.  One of Casey's co-workers lives there and told him they have a great 4th of July parade.  I was really surprised how nice it was, and the kids were pleasantly surprised how much candy was thrown to them.  I really love small town parades and haven't been to one since leaving Utah over eight years (holy cow has it really been that long?) ago.

After I got dressed and we were all ready to go I realized I'm becoming more and more like my mom.  I say this because growing up I always remember her wearing red, white and blue for the holiday.  Of course as a "trendy" teenager growing up, I always thought of it as geeky to dress for the holiday.  Well thanks mom for your patriotic fashion sense because I too dressed for this great holiday in red, white and blue!

 I actually got the flowers and beads at the parade, but you get the idea....can't forget the red so I had to include my headband! Yes, just like mom:)

Walking to the parade with daddy!

 Hayden was thrilled they were throwing candy at him and Corbin.

 The Milton Middle School marching band and flag girls (what are they called?)

  You want some candy mom?

  Square dancers!

 Milton High School Marching Band, man they must have been warm in their uniforms. It was only 83, but warm enough for me!

 Don't know why I took a picture of this lady, she was just so hippy-ish and odd that I had to.

 Interesting haunted house float, Corbin just pointed to it and said, "Ewwww!"

 This was a mini diesel truck.  If you look really closely you can see the driver is crunched down inside the tiny cab.

 You see the driver's sunglasses? Gives you an idea of how small this thing was.  I think it was only about three and a half feet tall. Hayden was about as tall as it.

 I tried to take this as a comparison, but it didn't really work because there was nothing to compare it to.

 Now THAT's a horse of a different color....

 Painted horses!  I loved it:)

Corbin waving and pointing to the horses. He was actually pointing to the stage coach that was coming down the road in a full trot.  They ended up stopping about 50 feet down the road from us when the horses kind of went bizurk and started turning in the street.  People started yelling, move your kids out of the way.  Sure enough they started heading straight towards us.  I grabbed my camera bag and Casey grabbed Corbin, but Hayden refused to leave his pile of candy that was sitting in the gutter in front of him.  Luckily the horses straightened out by then and missed running stubborn Hayden over by about 4 feet.  A little too close for me and Casey.  A lady overheard me say, well that was too close for me!  She started chatting with me and said her first year in Milton (six years ago) one of the horses got injured and started foaming and the mouth and was going crazy so a police officer had to put down the horse right there in the middle of the parade in front of all the kids.  Just pulled out the gun and POW!  She said her little 5 year old girl was traumatized.  Well thankfully we didn't have to witness anything like that today!

 They sure looked pretty trotting in front of us (until they went nuts).

And that was our first 4th of July parade with the boys.  I think it was a great success and hopefully we get to come again next year.
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We also decided to take the kids to the BIG Firework show rather than just doing them in our driveway and watching the neighbors set them off.  We headed over to Monona where they put on a pretty nice show. The only issue was we had to park over a mile away and it was crowded!  Despite the crowd and lack of closer parking we had a great time. In the beginning the boys loved it and were ooo-ing and ahhh-ing for quite some time.  Then the BIG BOOMS came and they decided they would rather just snuggle up to dad and hide under the blankets.  Overall it was a great time and the kids did great.  Hayden only lasted about 50 yards before he ended up on Casey's shoulders for the walk back to the car.  Luckily I remembered to bring the stroller for Corbin so I didn't have to lug him back to the car as well.  This was my first time ever taking shots of fireworks with my camera.  Considering I had no tripod and I had Corbin jumping over me half the time, I think I got a few decent shots in.  

My favorite part of the night was driving home when Casey said this. "Life does get better.  I remember growing up and doing all these things with my parents and being a kid thinking it was fun.  But now to do it with your own kids and as a father it makes it that much more enjoyable.  Doing traditions like this makes you reflect back on your own memories with your parents and grandparents and to think one day our kids will be able to do the same is amazing. It's true life does get better."  Well said Casey, well said.

I hope everyone else was able to enjoy the holiday as much as we did!