MONTICELLO PART 2

The next morning was Saturday & the big day in Monticello. Apparently, they have a big celebration every year for the 24th. Only they waited to celebrate it on Saturday the 25th. The day began with a pancake breakfast at the Lion's House in town. (Which we missed - it was so early & we had a HORRIBLE night's sleep.) After that was the parade. Always a highlight for kids & our kids were so happy that we didn't miss it sleeping in. Lucky for us, it didn't start until 11 am. Almost every "float" (it was a small town parade - mostly people riding quads, etc.) threw out candy to the crowd. Luckily, my girls wanted to wear their hats, so they were able to gather candy in their hat. They even had the fire truck spraying & cooling off the crowd. They had a line of tractors at one point & I had to take a picture of every one. I knew I had to get pictures of them for my nephew Carter who loves tractors. This one was the coolest...

And what small town parade is complete without the unicycle? (Although, these are pretty crazy!)

After the parade we walked around their little festival for awhile. They had food booths & a few vendors. It was crazy crowded - I guess people come from neighboring towns for the festivities. We saw the booth for fried candy bars - have you seen those? Basically anything can be fried. Even a dill pickle. Weird, eh? I wanted to try a fried Ding Dong. Ha! We told ourselves we were going to try it after we ate something, but then we forgot. We were so mad later when we remembered. That's just not something you see everyday.

We then headed to our meeting spot again & were able to hang out a little with my cousin Terry & his wife Brooke. Along with their kids. Their daughter was so stinkin' cute! I wanted to eat her up. She was not shy - which fit right along with my girls! Check out this cutie...
This family was the main reason I wanted to come to the reunion. Sure, I was excited to meet everyone, but it's been years since I've seen my cousin Terry Jr. My Uncle Terry Sr. came as well, but unfortunately my Aunt Vi & other cousin Tim couldn't make it. They live across the country, so it makes getting together difficult. Here's a pic of me & my cousin..

I spent a lot of this afternoon helping my Granddad scan pictures. My Uncle Terry brought some albums with pictures I've never seen. My Granddad was nice enough to sit & scan things for me so I could have copies of them. While I did this my sweet Aunt Vee played with my girls. She made bracelets & necklaces with them & they even had a little drawing lesson with her in the backyard...

At this point everyone was taking off & doing their own thing. We went for a little drive up the mountain & found a look out point that overlooked Dead Horse Point in the Canyonlands. Erik having fun with the camera...

The look out point had these cool poles with plaques saying "Dead Horse Point", etc. When you looked through the metal pipe then you were looking directly at the spot that the plaque said. There were 4 or 5 of them & I thought that was a cool idea. Again, something I had never seen before. (I had a lot of firsts this trip!) Kylie looking through one of the pipes...

I'm sad that I don't have any group shots. Somehow I ended up being the designated photographer for geneoly purposes, so I have a lot of headshots of everyone, but no fun group shots. Other than this said tale - it was a fun trip! According to my Granddad this may be the first of many reunions. I hope so!