Callahan Centennial Celebration

 

Our town celebrated it’s 100th birthday on May 27th. Adam and I were elected to put together a float for the store, so we spent pretty much every evening the week prior working on the float. It’s times like these I wish I wasn’t such a perfectionist- I wanted everything to look perfect, measurements had to be exact, bows had to look a certain way… when realistically, at the distance most people would see this cake you wouldn’t be able to tell- but it would bother me- so I probably spent more time than I should have make it ‘perfect’.

While we worked, Ava took a spin on the dolly. 20 years ago, this would have been me- I loved riding on these things!

The morning of the parade we spent a few hours (yes I said hours) blowing up balloons. We blew up over 200 balloons.

Adam and Kirsten carried some of the balloons around back to the float- this wasn’t even half of them- I didn’t want anything to do with balloons after we were done! haha!

We took our cousin Michael’s old car and had a sign made to look like the original delivery truck for the store. The big cake float followed the old car.

We asked Raeleigh if she wanted to ride with us on the float (with her mama’s permission of course ;) ) She and Ava looked so cute in their tutus. The certainly were ready for a party!

  

All of our hard work paid off and the float looked good- definitely fit for a birthday celebration. I didn’t want to see them tear it apart after the celebration was over!

 

Ava and I rode on the back of the truck with Raeleigh and Kirsten. We threw out candy to the parade viewers while Stacey and Maxx walked (or ran) behind the truck to hand out balloons to kids along the parade route.

Fortunately we had plenty of candy at our disposal to keep Raeleigh occupied if she started to get fussy or want to get down!

Both she and Ava were so cute sitting up there on the float. Growing up I was always on either the dance float or the store’s Christmas float for the town’s Christmas parade. There were a couple years I was event the jack-in-the-box that popped out with candy. I was so excited for Ava to be able to ride in the parade. Now, I just have to talk dad into bring the jack-in-the-box back for the Christmas parade.

After the parade, they kept the streets closed until 10:00 that night. It was really neat, they had a old car show at one end of the street and several vendors had booths set up and there was live music playing at the other end of the street. We met up with Marty and Neal and chatted with them for a little while. 

We ran into the Singley’s and the Cruce’s and Ava immediately talked them into riding the McDonald’s train with her! They hopped on and rode around the dirt circle track for a couple times.

   

The parade was at 4:00 in the afternoon and the fireworks didn’t start until 9:00, so we had plenty of time to do whatever we wanted. The kids ended up dancing in the streets for a large majority of that time.

Ava and Baylie and Brody- I’m not quite sure what Brody is doing in the picture- haha! :)

They danced and danced and danced. Trevor was there as well, but every picture I had of him was blurry (imagine that, right Jenny?!) Brody and Baylie are so funny together- you can tell they spend a lot of time with each other. You can read here and here about Brody “proposing to Baylie”

It ended up being a nice celebration and we were able to talk and visit with a lot of people we knew. When the fireworks began, we were actually in Wendy’s with Tracy and Baylie getting something to drink and apparently neither Baylie or Ava are big fans of the fireworks (or rather, the noise that comes along with the fireworks) We walked outside Wendy’s and immediately turned around and headed back inside, Ava was just too scared- luckily, Baylie and Tracy were inside as well and we were all able to watch them through the windows.

By the time it was over and we had all made it home we were all exhausted, especially one little girl in a pink tutu :)