4th of July

I was really looking forward to going to my old hometown parade. This is the parade our family was in every year growing up. We would get all the Karl Webb descendants and pile on the big flat bed trailer pulled by the logging truck. We would do things like play water balloon volleyball on the back and throw the water balloons out into the audience or hand out cups of homemade ice-cream.
It was so nice to wake up and not have to leave really early to save spots along the parade route. Anath's in-laws had parked their RV near the sidewalk and set up canopies and chairs the night before. All we had to do was show up in time for the parade.
I found some fun shirts at Walmart the night before that were red and blue and were perfect for our road trip. Everything really is better in Arizona, right?!

Before the parade even started Harrison had found the cooler of Otterpops and we spent the rest of the morning trying to hide them from him. After all was said and done I think he had eaten 6. James kept begging for Otterpops and wanting to eat his parade candy. My 3 yr old nephew Jarom threw up from all the junk he ate which I conveniently used to show James what could happen if we ate too much.

Something you would only see in an Arizona parade are the Indian Crown Dancers. They used to come to our Elementary school and dance when we were growing up. They were actually kind of scary when I think about it, wearing those hoods and lunging at young elementary kids.


One of James' favorite parade entries was the sanitation district and it's motorized garbage can doing wheelies.

The boys were both in awe of the race car driving by and revving its engine really loud.
Most of the floats handed out candy instead of tossing it. It usually resulted in the kids mobbing the person looking like panhandlers.

The Sonic Coney Dog didn't escape the attack either and all he was handing out was coupons!

After the parade we came home and cooked hotdogs and ate watermelon. We had four of my siblings here for the holiday- Maylene and her family (they live close by in ShowLow), Darrel and his sons from Las Vegas, and then Rollin and Anath from Gilbert. It made for quite the party.
We made two big freezers of homemade ice-cream which is a 4th of July tradition. My mom had big gallon bags of crushed oreos left over from my nephew Russel's wedding reception last week so we added them in. Amazing! Who knew cookies and cream ice-cream could be so amazing?! The recipe is simple- 3 cups sugar, 1 qt cream, 1 Tbs vanilla and fill to the line with milk. Then half way we added the crushed cookies. Harrison and James had fun helping me add ice to the freezer when it was turning.


That night we drove to Rollin's in-law's house in ShowLow because they live right behind the school where the fireworks were launched. Harrison fell asleep right before we got there so we just left him in the car. We lay out on the grass and had a great view of the show and didn't have to fight the crowds or traffic. As much as we do things for our kids like dragging them out late at night to see fireworks, James almost fell asleep and then only wanted to eat the m&m's Rollin's family brought. We changed him into his pjs before we left and he was asleep within minutes of getting in the car.
It was a long, fun day and it's so wonderful we live in the free country we do.