TyandNat 4th

On the 4th I was up at 5:30 working on updating church records. Bishop Tait picked me up at 6:30 and we drove to the church to set up for the Bishopric pancake breakfast. After getting things set up I became a pancake flipper man. Since I don’t like pancakes at all I have very little experience in making and flipping them and it was pretty sad watching me try. I was even a little surprised when a few of the people attending the breakfast showed no shame and pointed out to me how lousy I was at flipping pancakes. Oh well, I guess to be a good dad I better improve in this area.
After eating we had a short patriotic program (pledge, Star Spangled Banner, short remarks by Brother Wankier, and a few patriotic jazz numbers on the sax by Tom Clark). After that I held a piñata for the kids. After they beat the candy out of it the younger kids stuck around to continue beating the piñata—they just wanted to destroy the thing J. We visited with friends for a bit and then headed to downtown for the parade.
This was our first time taking the kids to a parade and they thought it was awesome! It was, for the most part, a regular 4th of July parade. However, you have to remember that Bloomington is not a normal town, so there were quite a few “not normal” entries in the parade. They included an anime group, a dude on a tower that was the self-proclaimed “God of pointless things,” there were some pretty scary looking roller derby girls, and a few other hippy floats. The kids loved catching candy and we enjoyed visiting with the people sitting next to us on the street.
The afternoon was pretty dreary. We sat around the house, writing in journals, reading, and doing “projects” with Eli. In the evening we went over to the Nielsen’s for a bar-b-que and to visit with our friends. They crammed a lot of people into their house (still raining) but it was still pretty fun visiting with friends and eating good food. Eric did a great job with the hamburgers. We came home and got Sharon to bed and watched the first 20 minutes of a movie called “Five Children and It.” I’m really excited to watch the rest of the movie because the first little bit was awesome.