Grand Old Day!

This summer has been BUSY. You'll hear all about it in future posts, but to start the summer off right, we went down to the Grand Old Day parade on Grand Avenue in St Paul. Its days like these that I am so thankful for where we live, St Paul is such an enriching community with so much diversity, entertainment and support for the development of little boys like ours.


The parade was on a perfect summer day, sunshine and happiness brimming from the streets of St Paul. Collin was very excited to see the firetrucks, police cars and floats, and as an added surprise there were dozens of dogs in the parade, and Collin was amazed that he could watch them all walk by and pet a few.

Grand Old Day is put together to celebrate the kick off of summer, and as a result, its a mish-mash of floats, cars, candy throwing vehicles, odds and ends, cats, dogs, pianos...the list goes on. Around St Paul there are a group of folks who are the real ghostbusters. I mean, really, they are ghostbusters. They have the car, the outfits, even the little boxes attached to their packs that trap the ghosts, and they show up for every parade in town during the summer. Here they are again...
This year in St Paul there is a public arts installment program that hosts pianos around town placed in parks for everyone to play. There are something like 40 pianos all throughout town, tuned and painted by donating organizations. Some are colored by kiddos, other painted with motifs. Here are three of them on a float before they reach their final destinations in St Paul.
Collin, when not chasing candy (that daddy ate), sat perched on Drew's shoulders, while Owen and I sat curbside enjoying the nice breeze and great views. Grand Old Day's kicked off the summer the right way, heading us toward oodles of fun in the coming months. Its days like these that I remember exactly why we live here.
I love St Paul.