A Parade Weekend


A Parade Weekend
By Allan Olson
Oh – the madness of waiting in line with four kids for a parade, the ants in their pants were quite evident as they wrestled around in front of the Elementary school building where our designated spot was located.
While waiting for the Cass Lake Chamber of Commerce annual Rib Fest parade to begin on Saturday July 27, their mom dumped the candy in the buckets and also arranged stuff so it would be easy to refill the paper bags and the candy buckets throughout the parade. The boys were in charge of throwing newspapers while the girls were tossing candy and Nikolai and Abigail decided that they wanted to walk in the parade and do their duties while Marcus and Alivia rode in the back of the truck with mom who was assisting them in refilling and perhaps tossed a few papers as well.  Once the parade was underway it was hard to determine if it went really fast or really slow – we were “lucky 13” in the lineup. The first block was a little low in attendance but the kids still found people to toss candy and papers too. On Abigail’s side of the truck there was fewer people and some kids on the opposite side recognized her from school and called her to throw them candy – so she tossed them over the hood of the vehicle – “don’t do that,” Abigail I said – thankfully she quit doing that and concentrated on her side of the road.
As we rolled along the kids got refills in their paper bag or candy bucket and ultimately ran out of both candy and newspapers before we got to the end of the parade – we will just need to plan on more for next year. We found a place to park and Nikolai and Abigail got in line with the rest of the kids in the street to get some candy while the other two didn’t pay attention and stayed in the office.
After the parade the kids and mom went home while I continued covering the Rib Fest activities.
That evening I tried to take a nap – but that was disrupted and I was forced to make supper – “I guess kids needed food.” With supper complete came some more packing, for our vacation. My wife the packing crammer and Nikolai arranged a mock packing of the larger items in the van and re-arranged things for a couple different scenarios to get the van ready to go. By Saturday evening, our bags were nearly packed and the kid’s bags were about 95% ready to go.
Sunday was spent discussing things to pack, more packing and by Monday evening our van will be loaded and we will be ready for our adventure. Sunday was also spent very low key, as the next week will fly by in a flurry of activities and hopefully lots of fun, with seven kids and four adults all exploring a new location.
We didn’t take the opportunity to do any geocaching this weekend as it was spent largely being busy with the camping preparations or I was at Rib Fest. While hopefully we will be doing some geocaching on our trip we will really need to kick it in gear as my cousin and his family who had been largely inactive for a few weeks are now quickly catching up and I’m trying to keep ahead of them.

Thanks for reading, and remember to be safe on the lakes while enjoying the summer. Be sure to spend some time with kids! Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.

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