Parade

July 3rd was the big 4th of July parade in South Dakota.The family had a float in the parade It was to remember Jared’s grandparents. Before his grandpa farmed full time he worked for John Deere.  This is a huge John Deere family.  You won’t see anything but green tractors in this family…unless you head to Yakima, but that’s a whole different story. :) Conrad, Orin, and Dwight are sons of Claire and Rosemarie.  Then there’s Jeff.  He’s married to Beth (not pictured).  We like him because he went to UW.  But that’s about the only reason. Just kidding, Jeff!  I only wrote that because I know Beth is reading this.  Adam, there on the end is the son of Conrad and a grandson to Claire and Rosemarie.  Confused yet? It’ll get worse if I keep explaining who everyone is. These little future farmers are great grandsons to Claire and Rosemarie.  They drove these gators in the parade.  Now of course you already know Anna and Elizabeth, at least I hope you do.  I made their little outfits out John Deere fabric from Grandma Rosemarie.  We live in the city and our kids are not fortunate to own John Deere clothing.  I know they  are deprived.  I may have to start buying them some.  Here are some more great grandchildren.  I’m sure you can figure which ones are our kids.  They seem to stick out like sore thumb. Grandpa Claire was very into creating cool things with old wheels.  In fact his whole yard had different wheel sculptures everywhwere.  He was published in a magazine for it as well. Now that guy there belongs to me.  Looking at his family you can tell he’s a Melius.  That little baby on his lap I’m not so sure about.  She doesn’t really look like her father too much.  Maybe she did get his slanty eyes and flat nose.  Kidding!!!  Next to them is Laura who is married to Jared’s cousin David.  They actually got engaged the night of our wedding.  I like to think they we played a big role in getting them to get married.  In fact, I know it was us.  We’re that good!  Theresa is on Laura’s lap.  Isn’t she adorable? Alright, here’s half the gang hanging out while we waited for things to get rolling.  See Grandpa’s wheels?  Awesome aren’t they? Here are some more of my lovely children.  Can you name them?  I’m not going to lie, but I’m pretty sure we had the best float in the whole parade and we gave out the best stuff too! The back of the gators were loaded up with popsicles, tootsie rolls, and bubbles.  And not only that we threw out necklaces!  Cool, huh? Going down Main Street. Ahh, caught!  Here are some more Melius’ that ditched.  That’s okay they missed out. Once we got done going through the parade we pulled off to watch the rest of it.  Now it was the kids’ turn to collect candy. I don’t know whose yard we’re standing in, but we took over their front lawn.  We really did we just pulled out the beer and blankets and just made ourselves at home.  Now don’t try that in my yard or I’ll pull out the shot gun…or not.  I’d just give you the stare down.

Morgan and Rebecca.

Now there’s Jared’s aunt Kristi.  Can you pick her out?  Yellow squirt gun.  Her class of 1980 also had a float and she joined them when we almost finished.  She the awesome aunt that always sends the kids packages in the mail.

Look.  She thinks she conquered, but not so fast.  Some of the guys ran up and drenched her with water.  Ha!

Back home after the parade.  It was a fun and successful morning.  We took the kids home for naps and then it was time to really kick things into gear. Until next time….

You can check out some more photos from that day by clicking on the album below.

Parade Day