Here are some pre-parade pictures when they were getting set up.
My mighty warriors! They needed sunglasses.
My awesome girls and future missionaries!
These are all of the missionaries currently serving in the St. George Utah Mission. It was really cool to see.
OK so here we go...this was an incredibly long day so this will be an incredibly long post. I hope you make it through. It started off at 9am with the 24th of July parade that our stake always does. I don't know how this tradition started, I think it's because we were originally the only stake in Washington, but we still do it to this day. Each ward has a "float" (you know my feelings on floats) for their primary, something for the Young Women and Young Men, and then the Priesthood and Relief Society if they want to and a Grand Marshall. This year we had the privilege of having Bro. and Sister Holland as the Stake Grand Marshall. They were great! They came down the night before and we had a luau with great entertainment. JoEllen and I took our families to it and there were so many people that we all kinda split up so we could see better. The kids went up and sat on the lawn and JoEllen and I sat right behind President and Sister Holland. It was neat. Back to the p-raid...
Here is our Primary. David is sitting right in the middle with my cowboy hat and a yellow bandanna on.
Here are our Grand Marshals Phil and Lynn Mason. They are so wonderful. Josh made them a loaf of bread awhile back and they keep on raving about how good it was. I guess it's time to make them another one.
We also have an eclectic group of mountain men. Ed Bower, Lee Tippits, Glen Monnett and the newest member of the group Lawson!
He's such a cutie!
OK. Here they are. The Stripling Warriors! The guy in charge kept saying that there were huge groups of hundreds that were coming from other states to join us but they didn't. But I think this was better because it was just the people of Washington. The people who make up our community. The people who stand together now. There were 3 sections...
The WARRIORS OF THE PAST.
Joel
George
Josh
Riley and William
THE SCOUTS
Daniel Cluff
and THE MISSIONARIES (the warriors of today)
Here are Miles,
and
Ethan and Traxton.
and MY GIRLS! My future sister missionaries.
Then we were off the the carnival. The very first thing the boys wanted to do was climb in the dunk tank. So David and Evan got in line to be dunked and Evan and Ben got in line to dunk them. Sophie and Josh assumed there positions manning the face paining booth and bounce house. Like I said our stake is in charge so each ward was in charge of 3 booths and some of the entertainment. We have a little stage in the corner of the park that had non stop entertainment from 10am - 2pm. Our YW paint faces, YM man the bounce houses because the YM president owns them and the High Priest manned the Scone booth again this year. I digress...So, here's Evan, looking all tough. George got 3 balls to throw and he missed all 3 so Matty got to run up and push the lever to make Evan go down. It was so funny.
See Matty?
Here's David. A little more timid.
Ben hit it the first time but not hard enough. But the next hit was perfect and down her went.
So the rest of the day David thought being wet was a good excuse to not wear a shirt. Even though his shirt was completely dry. Oh well, it was 100+ degrees that day. So we walked around and did all of the fun little games while everyone else worked. Joel caught up to us every once in awhile when he wasn't busy being Bishop.
I just have to honk my own horn for a second. We stood in line for this game for a couple minutes and watched a bunch of people old and mostly young try to hit it hard enough to ring the bell and only one teenage boy did it. After David and Ben tried it I told the guy that I wanted a turn and you get 3 tries so I took 1 good swing, the bell rang, I handed the hammer back to him and said thanks and walked away. Oh yeah, I'm awesome. The boys told me that I still had 2 more hits but I told them that once was enough. Secretly I was afraid I wouldn't hit it again. It was funny.
In this one Traxton is standing behind the tire that Ben is trying to throw the tennis ball through. Traxton got pegged a couple times.
The local missionaries manned a booth this year. Can you guess what it was?
The boys all had fun trying to throw each other.
See the missionaries?
Here are the young women. They had a huge line the entire 4 hours.
He's always so happy!
Then we were able to take a snowcone break!
Then after we cleaned up the park and took down all the table and chairs we had a couple hours to relax before we went over to the Scott's for dinner. Josh runs a mean B-B-Q.
These two are best friends. Can you see me in the first one? I thought it was awesome.
So after the B-B-Q...I told you it was a long day...we met up with the Wells Family and went to the Rec Center for their 24th of July Party. It was pretty fun. They had this jousting pad that everyone loved to do. The kids did it when we first got there and then later that night when the sun went down in the dark when we were waiting for the fireworks to start. It was pretty funny to watch.
I love George's face. He's having a ball.
I just wanted to point out in this one how thin Josh is getting. He never reads this so he won't get embarrassed that I said it. He always wears baggy shirts so you can't tell but he's really been trying hard and is working out at the Rec. Center with his friends. He wants to have a 6 pack by the time Shayne comes home. He has also grown 4 inches which really helps.
OK, these next two pictures are for Shayne. I thought they were really funny. This is our friend Skyler who when he saw me came over and gave me a big hug. A real one not just a side hug and asked me how she was doing. Anyway, lifeguards as a rule HATE to get wet. I know it's funny right? Well a little kid had gotten the rope, that you are supposed to be able to pull and get yourself wet, stuck up on the top of the pipe and made it so it wasn't long enough for anyone to reach. So Skyler had to unstick it. The funny thing was that he couldn't. He tried and tried and just couldn't get it so he ended up having to climb up on top by the water bucket and over to the pipe to get the little rope unstuck. It was hilarious!
Then a couple minutes later everyone decided to go down the slide!
Then we heard a Lifeguard double whistle which meant they needed the head guard which was Skyler so we watched to see what the problem. There was this cute little boy crying on the stairs up to the slide. Apparently he wanted to slide down but then at the last second got scared and couldn't do it and started to cry. The lifeguard up top didn't know what to do so he called Skyler who came and talked the little boy down. It was so cute. He even held his little hand down the stairs until the dad showed up at the bottom to get him.
Here is Zack. We was working that night too.
Mitchell was too!
And A'lyssa and Lindsley!
A'lyssa and Lindsley were in charge of the Water Walkers that Ben and David did. Here is David getting in the water.
Here is Ben getting in a ball.
This is how they inflate them. hahaha!
Here he is taking his first step.
Mitchell was the guard in charge of making sure the kids in the balls had fun. He also was in charge of making sure that after the allotted 5 minutes were up that he dragged the balls over to the deck so Mikyle could pull them out so they didn't run out of air.
Here is Ben getting out of the ball with Mikyle helping him and the other Ben walking by.
David loved it. He wanted to go again but they were closing it down and were the last kids to get to go on it.
David also raced JoEllen in the lap pool. Here they are doing Breast Stroke. He almost had her.
He did really well they did Butterfly. She pooped out after a couple seconds.
She killed him in Freestyle.
This was right as we were getting out to get ready for the fireworks.
And this was what we watched while we waited.
The fireworks we awesome! Washington did a great job of the entire day. From 9am until 11 pm it was non-stop fun! Thanks everyone for making a day to remember.
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