Our July 4th Weekend and Water Parade

Last weekend we enjoyed fireworks on July 3rd at Falcon just 15 minutes away. I had taken the children up to the park to join a little birthday celebration for a friend's daughter with several other young people.

I prepared these dishes of cheese cubes and cherries to take along.

Here are a couple fireworks pictures.

They were totally splendid.

Then on July 4th itself we went to Pueblo West's water parade

with Iva's family.

The girls were watching the proceedings behind Iva's Nazarene church tent which was set up by the street the parade went along.

They warned us that everyone should plan to get very wet, so Jonathan put his phone in a plastic bag in his shirt pocket!

One little kid was squirting water up the truck exhaust pipe!

The church had a truck or two there with a couple trash cans or barrels full of water which the little children used to fill their squirt guns.

Hannah had a blast blasting everyone around with water!

Iva's pastor is such a fun person, and he just had a blast splashing everyone and getting the kids to splash him! Here, he had dunked our Timmy clear into the barrel of water after Timmy splatted him one too many times!

So here is part of the parade coming by. The dry part of the parade.

After the dry part, was the wet parade with everyone in the floats or trucks or whatever water-gunning or hosing down everyone watching, and everyone watching returning fire--
I mean--water!

r

Here was a nice "float." I noticed that there were a lot of churches represented. It seemed like quite a clean parade. I was so afraid there would be some really bad stuff after that Supreme Court ruling,

but instead, there were a lot of healthy, good representations.

Carrie and Elisa watching from a distance, although Carrie went out and got plenty wet other times.

Elisa looked so modest and lovely. (We won't describe some of the other sights we saw, which is why we probably won't go again, even if it was fun.)

Here was a Chick Fil E float on top of a huge truck, and wow, did they ever get doused as they went by!

Here the kids are dousing the pastor and it looks like another kid is dunked in the barrel again!

After the parade, we went to Iva's place for lunch.

Kenn had just made this pretty wind chime.

I loved these pots of herbs and flowers along the fence.

I didn't have much energy for making anything special with all the goings on, so we contributed bratwursts and a huge bowl of lettuce from our garden, and red, white and blue in the shape of berries and cheese slices.

Iva had made a delicious roasting pan full of potatoes, bratwursts and sauerkraut.

After lunch and a rest, a bunch of us played Telestrations.

The next day was Sunday and we had a picnic with Jonathan's parents and Jon and Esther's family.

But on the way, we had to stop at Grandma and Pa's place to cook the corn on the cob.

Grandma has their place so pretty with flowers.

Here's along the front of the house.

And here's part of the back veranda and yard.

She has flowers planted around their little windmill which she enjoys looking at from the kitchen window.

She even has a little garden in the corner of the back yard.

Grandma is a wonder!