The day started pretty early with the kids attending the local parade. Ken and Karen brought over Amanda so she could join in the parade. The parade is a fire truck that leads the group and drives through the neighborhood while the kids follow along behind it. There's also an ambulance that follows along behind everyone. All the neighborhood kids participate in the parade by riding their bikes in between the vehicles as they travel through the neighborhood. The kids are provided with streamers and balloons. For the kids though, riding in the middle of the street is probably the biggest highlight of the parade.
The pace of the parade is pretty brutal. Quinn didn't make it easy on me, he stayed just behind the firetruck all the way to the end. It's not so bad for the kids since they're on bikes, but for the parents that have to try and keep up with the kids biking along it's pretty tough 
(I was sweating quite a bit once it was over). Ginger stayed with Catherine and was closer to the end of the parade. I lost being able to see them and track them about the time of the first turn. Ginger and Catherine finished the parade by taking the shortcut (which cuts down on the distance by about half). Even taking the shortcut they got back to the clubhouse well after Quinn and the firetruck got back.
After the parade we all changed into our swimming gear and headed to the pool for a while (I think all told we were at the pool for more than three hours). When we started, Amanda was wearing all kinds of flotation equipment, but as we were there longer, she shed most of that and even got to the point where she was jumping in eventually. Since we were there for so long, we ordered lunch from Papa Johns and had it delivered to the pool. Based on my past history with Papa Johns, no one's going to be real surprised to find out they were over 20 minutes late from when they said they would get the food there.
Once we left the pool, we headed over to Vienna for the Festival. The kids had gotten a ton of sun, so hats were required. Finding a hat that fit Catherine though was something of a challenge. The prices for the rides were pretty steep. And none of the rides were all that impressive to be honest (although the kids seemed to have a lot of fun in one of the moon bounces). The worst offender was this inflatable caterpillar that the kids just walked through. Two dollars to basically walk 
through a tunnel that was maybe 30 feet long. There was a softball field nearby that Quinn ran around the bases on. In addition to the rides, there were some politician tents there also, but I'm planning on going more into that in a later post. I'll give you a hint on what it's going to be about, I asked both party tents about their position on Net Neutrality and one of the tents had no idea what I was talking about.
From there we went by Starbucks for some drinks for the kids (the heat was really bad today). While were there the severe thunderstorm that had been forecast rolled through. To be honest, it didn't look that severe. We headed over to Outback for dinner, and after that headed home. It was on the way home we got to see the effects of the thunderstorm. We saw all kinds of downed trees. Some appeared to have fallen through telephone or power lines, and one had almost completely blocked the on ramp onto I66 (you literally had to drive off the road to get around it). It was really hard to believe that the thunderstorm we had seen earlier had been the cause of all that destruction (I'm wondering if there wasn't a small tornado or something).
Needless to say once we got home, the kids went to bed. They were thoroughly exhausted. And finally, since it's the fourth, I figured I should find an old 4th of July group photo for today's flashback picture. Not sure when this was taken, but I think it was down at the mall when we went to see the fireworks one year.
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