We began a full day of 4th of July festivities by waking up early and driving up to Cody to meet my cousin Cheryl and her fiance Quinn, and Aunt Arlene and Uncle Les to see the traditional July 4th Parade, also known as Cody Stampede Days. There is a big rodeo that goes on all week and they do a parade on the 3rd and the 4th of July. This parade/rodeo celebration is quite prominent in "Western" circles and they have had the likes of John Wayne and Steven Segal serve as Grand Marshalls of the parade. This year it was supposed to be Wilford Brimley (who I don't really think of as being "Western" so much, but I suppose since he eats his oatmeal every morning and checks his blood sugar often, I guess he counts!), but he got "sick"...(I wonder how that could happen??)...and couldn't attend, so good old Uncle Sam served as Grand Marshall this year.
We had a great spot at the front of the parade (my Uncle Les drove down at 5 am to put out chairs for us)...which turned out to be quite beneficial for the kids because all of the floats were still fully stocked with candy to throw or goodies to hand out. Jett and Kolt came away with their pockets literally stuffed with candy and Jett actually got a mini basketball...he was so happy about that!
These horses were one of our favorites in the parade. They are there every year and they are not only beautiful, but they are a special breed that is absolutely HUGE! You can see the man standing next to the horse only reaches to about the horse's shoulder level, and the man was not a small man! They were so amazing!
Above: "Buffalo Bill Cody" who the town of Cody is named afterBelow: Mountain Man on a horse
Above: This was one of the kids' favorites...I believe these are all real animals that have been "stuffed" or I guess a better word might be "preserved" by a taxidermist.
Above: This is actually a woman riding this Longhorn bull!Below: These are the "Parade Cops" I guess you could call them. They ride up and down the parade route to make sure everyone stays safe and all the animals stay calm.
After the parade, we headed back to Aunt Arlene's to have a yummy BBQ lunch and to visit for a while since Cheryl would be leaving for her home in Texas the next day. It was so nice to be able to visit with her again...it's been sooo long since we have really gotten to hang out together. We were really close when we were little, so it was fun to laugh about "old times!" Then we went back home to Powell for more fun and more BBQ for dinner. I cooked some hot dogs on the grill and had made some homemade chili and rice crispie treats....YUM! After dinner, we had to go out of the city limits to light fireworks, so we went up on a high hill out of town, where we would be able to see the city fireworks display also.
My nephew, Adrian is quite a little firebug and insists on lighting his firecrackers in his hand and then tossing them. However, there was quite a little breeze blowing and so some of the sparks blew back towards him and left him with a burned shirt and a nice blister on his neck! And this was just the beginning of our fiery mishaps of the night!
Our spot was actually on the rim of a little gully, which was filled with dry bushes and vegetation, and as I mentioned before the wind was blowing nicely. So our first "incident" happened when one of the boys' fireworks went over the side of the gully and landed in the dry brush below...far below...too far for us to be able to get to it to put it out or even hope that any water we tossed over the side would get to it. Fortunately, after a few agonizing moments, it went out by itself! Then, Blaze and Adrian, went to the edge of the gully again to launch some bottle rockets and the next thing I know, Blaze is running back yelling "FIRE!" I guess they dropped their punk straight down the embankment and it landed directly in a dry bunch of weeds, which immediately started on fire! By the time I ran over to see, the fire was probably about 2 feet by 3 feet in size and growing! I yelled to Adrian to call 911 and then I jumped down the side of the embankment. Luckily there was enough loose dirt around it that I put it out pretty quickly by holding on to a bush growing out of the side of the hill and kicking dirt onto the fire. Now, this hill really was nearly 90 degrees and I was down probably at least 8-10 feet, and by this time I've got a nice audience at the edge of the "cliff." So Jett, yells down to me..."Hey Mom, how are you going to get back up!?" I had no thoughts at all of how I would get back out when I did it, I just wanted to get the fire out before it got any bigger. Luckily though, when I went down, I sort of created some steps to go back up, so it was a little like climbing one of those rock walls at the playground, only real! So with tragedy averted and not too many injuries to speak of we had a really memorable 4th of July Celebration!
Cousin Tallin and his mom, Trista, also came up and so did Mike's youngest sister Steph, her husband Fernando, and their 3 cuties...Dominic (baby), Sabrina (behind Mommy because the fireworks were scaring her), and Brandon (spiky mohawk) also joined us to watch the fireworks.
It was such a great day spent celebrating our Country and enjoying family, friends, and being back home!
2 Comments:
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July 7, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Happy 4th of July! It looks like you had a lot of fun. I agree, that one float with the "preserved" animals is rather neat!July 8, 2008 at 12:33 PMI really miss the "small town" feeling of a Fourth of July parade. And, being able to attend one without it being so hot that your eyelashes will melt off! All of your posts have beautiful scenery. I am so happy for you that you are HOME. See, you are having so much fun that you don't even need us anymore. ;)
