sometimes we're Patriotic
barefoot patriot
I feel obliged to post about Patriots' Day every year, because it's awesome and also because I'm aware that everyone outside of Massachusetts and Maine doesn't know anything about it. You're totally missing out! (Since my core competency after eight PM is more posting photos than explaining historical holidays I'll leave it to wikipedia to get you up to speed.) We were joined this year by the VB family; while we beat them to the parade route they were rather more prompt with the blogging. Clearly they've got their priorities straight.
parades are serious business
Bands, reenactors, trucks, baton girls, clowns: all were well represented. The fife and drum corps were my favorite this year.
I know that flag-bearer
Zion was thrilled to be out and about, and I took many cute pictures of him engaged in a variety of endeavors; it was a struggle to pick just one to publish. I chose the one leading off this post because of it's resemblance, loosely, to other parade photos of yore (they wear hats and wave flags). Harvey also enjoyed himself but less demonstratively, and he spent more time eating and sleeping. I have photos of him doing both, but he's more comely in the former case.
parade food
Lemonade, slush, fried dough, hot dog, and french fries—all consumed in addition to the actual lunch we packed for him and brought from home—were at least as interesting to him as the parade. I guess he's blasé about the whole thing—it was his third Patriots' Day parade, after all. Not so for Zion and his friend Nathan, who wasn't sure what he thought about all the commotion.
"do I like this?"
And then there was this big boot thing, which amusingly enough came by right as Zion was diverting himself with unlacing my shoes. I was happy to distract him with the plus size model.
big shoe to fill
For the sake of the historical record I need to add that the day was quite unpleasantly hot this year, which is why the pictures show us reclining in the grass rather than out there on the curb as usual. We reserved our spot with a quilt but quickly decided that we'd be better off with a slightly obstructed view from under what shade could be provided by a budding maple tree. Also note that we traveled by bicycle, which is quite the way to do it. For some reason traffic is a little heavy around parade routes.