Around 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, I'll be heading down to Wisconsin for the weekend to visit my sister who lives about five hours away. It'll be our first visit down there in six months. Believe me, we've tried making it down there sooner, but a lot of different things came up. One specifically was my move into the new house back in June. I am really looking forward to the visit and being able to get away from the U.P. for three to four days. That's not to say I am sick of living where I live - I can't think of living anywhere else! It's just that any person, not just me, needs a breather every now and again to appreciate where they live and to be grateful about where they live once they do arrive back home. So, with the impending trip, I want to try and get in a few blogs before I go. Otherwise by the time I get back, it'll already be the middle of August!
So this week I'm on vacation from work - and let me tell you, it's been a long time coming. I was last on vacation over a year ago back in July 2008. So I was definitely due for a week off. This past weekend, I spent some time back at my parents place where the annual homecoming and county fair were being held. If you read my previous blog post, I'm sure you saw how excited I was to go back and be apart of the festivities again. I arrived on Saturday, plenty of time to take the walk down to the downtown area of the village to watch the parade march down the street. Like I said in the last blog, no matter how old you are, you never get sick of watching a parade. And there's something absolutely special about watching your own hometown parade. You see familiar faces and businesses represented in the parade and it truly makes it feel like home. What made it even special was my niece and nephew being able to watch the parade and to retrieve enormous amounts of candy. Heck, even my parents and I were picking up the candy off the street every time people from each float would throw some at us. It always helps to have kids with ya, cause as soon as they saw them, out flew the candy! I took a whole round of pictures with the kids and of each parade float as I'll soon be uploading them to my hometown website. As soon as I get the pictures and the time!
One of the activities of the county fair is a tractor pull that is held during the weekend. I believe there were at least 12 different tractors in the parade and a couple of them were pretty unique. One individual souped up his tractor and installed a V-8 engine in it! He was revving it up every so often and it was a pretty interesting piece of equipment to look at. Another tractor was a real-old timer. It was one of those old steam engine tractors, complete with a whistle you'd hear from a train back in the early 1900's. You could smell the wood burning inside the tractor as it went by. It was a cool sight to see and it's one of those things you don't often get to witness. There were also a countless number of reunion floats this year - probably the most I've ever seen. From the class of 2009 (which I had to admit was pretty clever - only 60 some days of being out of school, but having the least decorated float) to the class of 1949, there were a lot represented at this year's parade. And next year, it'll be my class, the class of 2000! Our ten year reunion will be held, and I just might happen to be in the parade. How crazy is that?
The parade is always the biggest highlight of the event for me, but it's always nice to walk the grounds of the fair as well. It's a small fair, so it doesn't encompass many acres. We checked out both exhibit buildings, saw my sister's and her kids' exhibits and variety of ribbons. Then the kids went on a few of the rides there. They were just those bouncy-slide kind of things and my nephew especially likes those. So they got their fill of those rides and then we went and checked out the animals in the barns. My niece loves animals and she even got to pet a baby calf. We got a few refreshments and took a final walk around the grounds until we headed home. And home for us is just a block away practically.
So now that that event is over, my summer is practically over with! No big occasions to look forward to, other than to enjoy the rest of the summer and to finish some of our big remodeling projects. I am hoping the end of summer and fall will end up being warmer than average. I mean afterall, I think we're due. And better yet, I have another week off from work in September to enjoy, so I'm sure there's plenty of nice weather left to enjoy. Better make the most of it, because it won't be long until the snow starts flying!
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