The Heathen Housewife

We had a very nice American Independence Day holiday here, and I hope you had a good day too, no matter where you live. I took a ton of pictures today, and boy oh boy are you in for it! No knitting in today’s post, I’m afraid. Just perhaps a tease at the end about tomorrow’s very-knitting-related post.

First, while I was downloading photos, two pictures that I meant to write a post with yesterday but, um, didn’t. Because I was too busy vegetating on the couch with my socks and the final DVD of season 7 of the Amazing Race. I am so hooked on that show, and I was so relieved when the people that won that season won. It was a good season. For some reason, only seasons 1 and 7 are currently available on Netflix, but 2-6 are supposedly going to be available some time in the foreseeable future. I have them in my saved queue. No spoilers! But back to those pictures.

Julie “doing paperwork” while Sophie napped yesterday.

Sophie the moment I walked in her room after her nap yesterday.

Don’t you just love that “rarin’ to go” face? I do.

Alright, so now we’re caught up on gratuitous kid photos. Let’s get on to today’s business. The ritzy suburb to our south (Edina) had a Fourth-of-July parade this morning. We made plans with family to try to meet up and do the parade together, which only semi-worked, but I’m glad that the plans at least got us to the parade at about the right time. It would have been nice if we had gotten there early enough for a front-row seat on the shady side of the street instead of a second-row spot on the sunny side of the street. But the girls didn’t seem to mind, and Joe and I sucked it up.

I love a good parade. When I was a wee kid, my sister and I were in a baton-twirling marching group called the “Missouri Tigerettes” (oh, how I wish I still had access to those pictures!) and we marched in all the local parades. This parade was a lot like those, only because it was in a ritzy suburb of a major metropolitan area, it was by far bigger and better.

There was a choo-choo train.

There were several old-fashioned fire engines – I only took a picture of one, but how many old-fashioned fire engines do you really want to see?

Lots of horses. One horse in the very first horse group of the parade took a giant crap while they were waiting to move forward (we were standing right at the beginning of the route). The crowd applauded profusely when the guy with the giant shovel came along to clean it up. Then, a guy from the next entry stepped in the pile and cursed loudly right in front of all the kids. Classy.

There were many marching bands. I love marching bands, and I mostly managed to take pictures of the dancers and cheerleeders, and not very good pictures at that.

Oh, but hey – the drum section! They’re the best part.

Some of the marching bands were less formal than others. I think this one may have been the Edina High School Alumni. But I’m not sure.

Clowns! Limitless clowns. At least clowns are less scary when viewed from a distance at a parade and are forced to move quickly on.

A local group of pediatricians had a float, and they were handing out popsicles. Julie and Sophie slurped theirs down with glee. It was hot out there!

There was a small fleet of old fashioned bikes.

Ooh look! More dancer/cheerleaders – they were with a marching band.

There was a quite large fleet of “alternative vehicles” which were pretty cool.

Followed up by something called a “Pedal Pub”, which was really cool. It’s a giant bike, and all those people are pedalling, except the guy in the middle who is steering. Joe liked that one.

There was a giant group of jugglers…this is about a fifth of them.

And another marching band!

More clowns.

And a clown playing an organ-type instrument.

There were Morris dancers, including this guy wearing a hobby horse.

There were grandmothers marching for peace, which I loved…but not as much as the dignified war veterans, of whom I did not manage to snap a picture. As against the war as I am (very!) I am just as supportive of our troops, and I was a little surprised to find tears trying to well up in my eyes as I gazed with gratitude at the men who have fought for our country. I’m such a sap. There weren’t as many vets in the parade as I would have expected or hoped for, but each time some came along, the crowd all stood and applauded heartily, and at those moments I felt a little true patriotism for almost the first time since GWB sent us to war.

There were many other entries, including many local politicians and candidates for office. Near the end there was this interesting group of superheroes, who willingly posed for the camera. Gotta love the cheese!

The parade was over, and it was time to head over to Joe’s cousin’s house for lunch. They had been grilling beer-can chicken – yum!

And someone made a really good pasta salad…

and I got to help the in-laws roll a giant pile of kim bahp.

Isn’t my father-in-law cute? He was doing the slicing. Let’s have a closer look at that giant pile of rolls…

I as much as I could at lunch, and Joe’s mom sent a giant Tupperware home with us for dinner. Kim Bahp doesn’t refrigerate well, so you pretty much have to eat it the same day unless you want to be really disappointed with the results.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at home, forcing the kids to take naps which they desperately needed, then hanging out in the back yard with the girls, throwing those popper things on the ground and watching them enjoy the little “bang” sounds. Joe took a rare-for-him nap, and some of our awesome neighbors invited us over to their yard for a slice of watermelon with their little party.

I couldn’t have asked for a better holiday.

Now, here’s the tease for tomorrow. Neighbor Laura gave me this:

I’m going to test it out tonight and give you a report tomorrow. You’ll see – it’s really cool.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.