Dairy Day Parade

The great thing about living in a small town are the little parades. In the spring they have the "Dairy Day Parade", in the Winter we have a Holiday Parade with Santa, In the fall they have a Scarecrow Festival and they even have a movie night at the park each weekend in the summer - all these fun family activities for free! I really enjoy living in Meridian and the small town atmosphere it has.

I live in the downtown area of our dear little town and can walk to all of these wonderful events (minus the movie night). I can even sit in my back yard and enjoy the fireworks during the 4th of July celebration. Pretty cool!

This year I invited my Niece Robyn who lives in Nampa to come and watch the parade with us. It is much more exciting when you watch the parade with little children. Robyn has three little children.

She almost didn't make it because the police blocked off all entrances to my house. I told her to tell them that she lived here and the mean old police wouldn't let her through on Locust Grove and Pine. Luckily there was a nicer police officer who let her come at Franklin and 3rd East. I posted a comment about this on Meridian City's facebook site and they got back to me. Hopefully they will speak to the Police officer who was soooo mean - maybe he will have better commonsense and let residents to their houses - sheesh!

Anyway... she made it. It was a rainy day - a rainy parade. We loaded up with our umbrellas and set off to the parade. Her little boy, Colt, Robyn my niece, Jayden and Halle. Such a cute little family. Her husband was traveling back from Pocatello and couldn't join us - his name is Jason.
At the beginning of the parade we get FREE chocolate milk - the best way to begin the DAIRY DAY PARADE - woo hoo... Colt, Jayden and Halle showing us their yummy milk.
I had to get a picture of Brady drinking his chocolate milk.
We made out with tons of candy for the kids and 3 Dairy Day Parade shirts that they were throwing out to the crowd. Robyn got one for her and her husband Jason. This is Brady's Dairy Day T-Shirt. This is the front of the T-Shirt.
The back of the shirt --- Have you had your 3 today?
I took tons of pictures of the parade. This is the genie and his flying carpet.
The camel.. The legs moved back and forth as it marched forward along the parade route.
Lots of cows. The paint was running on this poor cow - from the rain. A cow truck!
Pulling a cow family and their cute barn.

It's all about milk - for strong bones! We need to "fuel" our bodies with Moo Juice!

Plastic bag wrapped drill team.. Kinda funny -- but a least the show went on!

I had to post this picture because I caught my umbrella in the photo. I'm melting, I'm melting... OK - wrong story... :-)

Along the parade, they also gave cheese string and coupons... Lots of coupons. Halle, Jayden and Colt received a squeeze ball from the Red Cross, a mini Frisbee from a bank (I think) and TONS of candy. They certainly got a bunch of fun things - here they are holding their sacks fun of yummy things!

Colt enjoying a sucker from his sack.

There were clowns - two silly clowns on a trampoline. Quite talented in a silly way!

Gymnast too! I love how these talented girls walked on balance beams, did the bars... even little boys doing the horse. Oh... I don't know all the names of the things they did - but it was wonderful to watch. There were several floats with equipment on them and gymnasts.

Around and around this girl went! They tied their hands to the bar - for safety. Just what you would need on a rainy slippery day is a girl flying off into the crowd. Yikes! and such bravery!

The Democrats had a pretty cool float.

Did I mention it was a Dairy Day parade - tons of Cows!

A cat chasing a block of cheese.

Pizza has cheese on it!

This was really cute... their were about 10 of these little cows hooked together. A cow train.

It was a long parade - more then an hour and a half. Which was long - starting at 7PM and we left at 8:30 because children needed to go to the bathroom. I don't think we missed much... Sometimes they give out ice cream and we may have missed that... But no big deal - we had ice cream sandwiches at my house for the kids.

It was a fun time - even though it rained. I am really glad that Robyn, Halle, Jayden and Colt could come and watch the parade with Brady and me. We had a great time! Thanks Robyn!

Hallee was brave enough to sit on my lap - which kept the chill away.

A side note..... Jason and Sharon were invited to the parade and were even at my house. They were afraid of a few rain drops and stayed home. Too bad for them!! But, Jason barbcued some awesome steaks for us, Sharon made asparagus and baked potatoes. Dinner was waiting for us at the end of the parade. It really was a wonderful evening!