Parades Galore!

Now that summer's here, it seems like the days are flying by. I went back to work on Wednesday, and before I knew it, it was Friday! Apparently, Ava had a long week, though...she fell asleep as I was feeding her on Thursday night. Her eyes kept rolling back, and finally, I let her nap for 20 minutes. All that fresh air at daycare must be wearing her out!


On Friday night, Scott, Ava and I went to the South St Paul Kaposia Days parade. Scott's mom and Whitey live right on the parade route, so it's nice that we have front row seats. Last year, Ava was only a week old at the parade, so she didn't really get to experience it. She did great this year...she watched everyone and everything so carefully. But the most exciting thing was the candy bucket...it doubles as a hat! The people giving out candy would put pieces right in her bucket, which I would very quickly remove. I did give her the tiniest piece of Laffy Taffy, but she spit it out right away.

I was eating a piece of her candy after she went to bed, and I was harassed by a clown in the parade for eating her treats! I told him she was too small, and then he told me she wouldn't get any bigger if I kept eating her candy! :)

"BACK OFF, MOMMA! IT'S MINE!"

There was some other excitement in SSP that night...the state patrol helicopter was searching for someone in SSP, and there were a ton of cops surrounding the park right by Deb's house. It's usually a very quiet neighborhood, so it caused quite the commotion!

Saturday afternoon, we drove down to visit Darren, Tiffany, and Isabel to partake in Grand Meadow's parade and city day. We were pretty excited to be able to go to another parade...and this one had even more candy than the SSP one! Since we already had a full bucket at home, we gave all of our pieces to Isabel...as Tiff said, it's good potty-training candy!

The girls got along so well...Tiff got this cool, double-seater wagon, and amazingly enough, no one escaped from it on the ride to the parade.

Enjoying the view from Daddy's shoulders...

Apparently, it was an exhausting parade to watch.

Isabel's protecting her ears from the siren...and enjoying a freezee pop. What a great treat to get on a hot, summer day!

After the parade was over, the boys headed out, and we went to the school's playground. They had so much fun playing on the slides, swings, and in the rocks!

That night, the boys headed out to the local races, and Tiff and I watched the girls. It was so nice to be able to hang out with Tiff again - we've missed them! We ended up watching 2 movies, and didn't go to bed until almost 2 in the morning. That would have been fine except Ava woke up crying at 5am. We finally got her to go back to sleep (using me as a pillow), but by 7:30am, she was up for the day. So, we headed home...and have been non-stop ever since.

How can it be Sunday afternoon already? I hope the whole summer doesn't go this fast! We've got Ava's pool warming up in the backyard...maybe tomorrow night she'll be able to splash around in it.

Stay cool!