4th of July

In addition to camping last weekend (see post below), we had a pretty full day on the 3rd as well as the 4th. The 4th of July is a huge outreach event for our church, and our small group is kind of in charge of the float part of the parade. Our church is also known for handing out water bottles - and everyone loves when our float comes through. We had over 3000 water bottles and still ran out! I think we could have 5000 next year. Pretty big parade for a small little town like Crystal!

Here are some pictures, mainly on Sunday when we were all together putting labels on the water and building the float.

Trying to stay cool in the shade...




Something fun to keep the kids occupied...


In addition to our float, we were decorating these "boats" that one of the guys made to pull the kids in for the parade...which was a brilliant idea because the kids LOVED riding all the way around the lake, and they never got bored, and we didn't have to worry about them while the parade was going.







Painting our sign...the guys did such an awesome job!!!


It looked awesome!! And, it was open in the middle (the picture above this one is a little easier to see that) so we had a place to put all our trash from the water bottles - it was perfect!


Damaris was pretty wore out...she crashed on the couch just in the short time I was unloading the car!

This year the parade was at 10 AM - which was SO MUCH better than 1 PM last year. It still was hot though...and the parade goes all the way around the lake - over 5 miles...so it is a long time to be running water to everyone. It lasted about an hour and a half for us to go all the way around in the parade. It was fun. Here are a couple pictures while we waited in line for the parade to start...

The water was stacked three levels high all the way around the signs and on top part of Stephen's trailer. It was a lot of water!!