Days of 47 Children's Parade

A week ago we had the opportunity to have Olive be in the Days of 47 Children parade. I was in it once when I was little. Our stake decided not to make a float and instead bring our Stake President's motorized train. Our theme was we "Choo choo choose the right." It was pretty cute. 

Here is Olive and her friend McCoy in front of our train.

  

Because Olive is Olive, she is excited about most things. Since we had just watched the 4th of July parade, she was pretty excited about being in this parade. We got there early and got our train conductor bandanna and hat.

  

Then we had lots of time to hang out. Thankfully, our cousins live in our stake and so we got to play with them. Don't they all look so cute?

 

And also thanks to our cousins, Olive has lots of friends in our stake so we got to play with them too. This is Olive and her friend Bo and they are darling little friends.

 

Then we got bored from all the waiting and playing so we decided to draw pictures with yet more friends. 

 

Then, because we are 4, we eventually got bored of that too and decided to go walk around and look at all the floats. I am really glad we did. We were the second to last group and we wouldn't have been able to see any of the floats in the parade unless we walked around to them. There were some very impressive ones with tons of details. I also thought that a lot of them did a fabulous job at interpreting the theme. When you consider that these are all made by volunteers for a little parade it makes them look even better. I kept thinking about how I wouldn't have the first clue about what to do to build a float. This float was super impressive, but not sure about how it was about pioneers. Oh well, Olive was so excited to see the Madagascar characters since we had just seen that movie!

 

We happened to be right at the front when the parade was starting. We got to see the officers on their motorcycles and the giant flag for the national anthem, and even my high school marching band to play it.

 

Then there was this group of people dressed like pioneers and we all thought that was really impressive. It was the first time really that I told Olive about how they got here and pulling the hand carts. 

 

But  when it was finally time for our group to walk in the parade it had been 2 hours and Olive was kinda over it. She might have had a mini tantraum.

 

Thank heavens Tanya was there. That girl can solve any of Olive's woos.

 

My one and only goal of walking in this parade was to get on tv. With this cute girl by my side I thought we'd be a sure bet. We went right past the camera's and waved and smiled and were just adorable. I thought we had made it on for sure. Then I called my husband and he said we weren't anywhere in sight. Turns out our stake is extremely small in numbers. By the time they talked to one of the kids walking, they were in a rush to film the next group and we were basically cut out. Blasted tiny primary!

 

The parade was a short 5 blocks and when it was over the real fun began. They had a whole carnival set up at the end. Scott brought Milo and met us at the parade. The best thing about it was that it was all free! Here they are bouncing on one of the probably 10 bounce houses they went on. 

 

Then it was off to face painting.

 

Olive chose a butterfly eye and was so happy with how it turned out, especially because it had sparkles.

 

Then daddy helped her build a bird house.

 

Then she got to rope a sheep.

 

Pretty good right? Maybe I should get her to join the rodeo.

And then I got tired of taking pictures but we also listened (very intently) to a Storyteller, danced like crazy at the free DJ, ate pizza, won prizes, did a whole lot more bouncing, and got very worn out. It was a really fun day and thankfully it waited to rain as we were driving home!