tractors and pumpkins and orange, oh my!

The Annual Salmon River Days Parade to kick off the July 4th celebration was on Friday, July 6th. Josh and I had decided a few months ago that we would enter a float in it this year, promoting our "Lil Munchkins Patch of Pumpkins". I thought and thought about how I'd like our entry to be, and discussed different options with Josh. We finally decided on using our little trailer, putting strawbales on it, placing 2 fence posts into the strawbales to hold our signs, and having the boys sit on the remaining part of the bales to throw out goodies to the parade crowd.

I went into town that morning with the truck pulling the trailer, and all the supplies in the back of the truck. I registered with the organizers, and found out we were #26, and where'd we have to park along a backstreet in town to be prepared to go in the right number during the parade. Then I drove over to my school to park and place everything where they needed to be on the trailer. I set out the bales where they would fit in the center of the trailer, pounded the posts into the bales, and hung up my signs between the poles. I cut a piece of butcher paper to place over one of the bales so that the boys' bottoms wouldn't get all scratchy, then I attached some wire pumpkins to hold the butcher paper in place on the edge of the strawbale.

I'd had an idea the day before the parade to have everyone wear orange hats, and I could reuse them again when the patch was open. I purchased enough hats for everyone on the float to wear (me, our 4 boys, and cousin Joel). Also, I'd worked on the 2-sided bottom sign for hours the previous day that gives details about the patch, and the top sign is the one we use to put by our road to advertise the patch in the fall.

Josh drove a tractor from his work, and met me at the school a little later to unhook the trailer from the truck and attach it to the tractor to pull it in the parade with.

Instead of candy for the boys to throw, I thought a fresh and new and fun idea would be to give out shaped rubber bands, instead. I found a great deal on Oriental Trading for food-shaped rubber band bracelets, so I bought 500 of them, and we distributed them evenly among the boys' buckets. We practiced flicking them all the day before, and everybody could do it except Kanyon. So the morning of the parade, we filled his bucket with 300 tootsie rolls to throw out instead.

After Josh arrived and hooked up the trailer, he drove us to our designated parking area along one of the backstreets in Salmon. And while we waited for the parade to begin, I finished decorating the trailer with orange and white crepe paper

Parked behind us was the special olympics entry, and they were wearing all bright orange clothing, too! I loved how Josh looked in his bright orange shirt and cowboy hat, so I whipped out the camera and took a picture. I didn't realize until after I took the picture, that the result was this funny combination (which I absolutely love, btw):

We were all so excited when we started moving along, inching closer to the turn to get us onto Main Street! We decided the placement of everybody on the trailer--we needed to distribute the weight evenly because the hitch was loose on the tractor, and it was a single-axel trailer. Ammon and Joel sat on opposite sides in the back, Jonah and Kanyon sat on opposite sides in the front, and Micah and I sat in the middle on opposite sides of the straw bales.

We had SO much fun in the parade! It was great to see so many people, and I felt like a celebrity because all of my little students would yell out "Mrs. Tolman! Mrs. Tolman"! There were a ton of people lining main street, and we completely ran out of rubber bands and tootsie rolls about 2/3 of the way down. The rubber bands were a huge hit! All the kids loved catching them as we flicked them out, and people who had multiple kids were yelling at us to flick out more because all of their kids wanted one! So next year, I will order twice as much!

It was a lot of work, but so worth it! I look forward to doing it all over again next year, and we will make improvements to be an even bigger and better parade entry!