Peach Days Parade

Every year I look forward to Labor Day because of the Peach Days celebration here in Hurricane.  

This year was an especially big deal because Grandpa Stratton and his two brothers (along with the three wives) were honored as the Grand Marshals of the parade.  We decided, as a family, to put a float in the parade in honor of the... honor.  (That was a funny sounding sentence.)

Below is the whole group, although there were probably at least 30 family members that were not there that day.

Our float was titled, "Building Our Heritage One Generation at a Time."  All of our fluorescent green shirts had that saying on it along with some construction equipment.  The photo below is from the "front of the float" and I don't think you can even really see the end of it.

Here is the most adorable family to be featured in the Interstate Rock Products float.  

Probably in the whole parade...

These three girls were in charge of lowering the candy down the shoot of the cement truck which emptied into wheelbarrows.  They also had the job of spraying anyone that looked too hot that morning or those that ran too close to the mixer truck in an effort to get extra candy.

The float started with a truck pulling this trailer which had a sandbox on it.  There were so many family members involved (yep, that whole mass of people was strictly family) that when they sat along the sides of the trailer it was hard to see the sandbox in the middle filled with kids playing with their trucks.

Behind the sandbox was a bunch more family as well as a tiny loader that had it's bucket filled with ice and water bottles.  We were also throwing out little hard hat key chains, frisbees, and little stress balls that were the shape of dump trucks.  It was fun to have extra little things that the kids (& adults) got excited about.
I loved the trucks and equipment that was made to go on the sides of the strollers and wagons that were carting even more Stratton children.

Don't mind us in the next picture...  actually, don't mind me at all.  I had run 13 miles with my good buddy Amanda right before the parade and I don't think I really had my wits about me.  That's my excuse for leaving my camera battery at home in the charger.  I was so ticked when I realized I couldn't snap any photos of my adorable/hilarious family.  (Big thanks to our cousin Christy that had her's there.)

Here's the only picture I could find of Colby and his job.  He had one of the candy wheelbarrows and he and Tyler ran all over the place passing out candy.  Most people throw candy, but not Colby.  He'd weave all through all of us walking, would pause at a group of unsuspecting parade viewers and would sweep out a whole pile of candy with his arm.  He was especially good at that when he'd spot families that we knew.  

I got so many ungrateful comments from the moms of these families.  

They all went home with far too much candy.

Here's the cute little candy thrower, Tyler.  

He had such a blast riding around with Daddy, the insane wheelbarrow driver.  They only had one close call when they jumped a curb and Ty wasn't quite ready and he almost launched out ahead of the wheelbarrow.  

I guess after that he did a great job of holding on when warned by Daddy and they "flew" all over the place.

It was really fun and a great production.  

I think I heard by the end that we could do that once every ten years or so...  it was a whole lot of work.