2010 Sundown Parade
Posted on May 8, 2010 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Things to Do.
I can’t decide which is more fun: watching the Sundown Parade (the official opening event of the Wichita River Festival) or being part of it. Watching is definitely fun, specially when you have fanatical parade watchers like the Phelps’ who scope out the parade route and carve out their spot three hours ahead of time. Actually, it’s Christy’s church connections. They are “da bomb” when it comes to good spots for watching parades and fireworks. We sat with them last year for the fireworks final and they had a super spot by the river.
Nothing is ever boring with Cory, April, Jay and Becca around. The Dills watched the parade with us last year. They weren’t able to make it this year, though.
Then again, Brian and I didn’t really get to watch much of the parade. We only got to see the last portion because we were actually part of the parade this year. Since my work sponsored the parade this year, they needed employees to walk in the parade. Jan talked us into doing it.
Brian wasn’t enthused at first. Unlike his dad who is in the parade every year (he’s usually with the KMMH helicopter float), Brian doesn’t like parades. He doesn’t enjoy watching them, much less being in them. Anyway, I told him that Lila was giving him her River Festival button (Thanks, Lila!) so that eased some of the agony.
There was a lot of waiting around before the parade began so we decided to walk over to position #15 where the KMMH folks were waiting and said “Hi” to Brian’s dad. They all wore eyepatches this year to go with the festival’s pirate theme.
One of the women in our group said that we should have made a sign that reads “WESTARRRR!” and dressed up as pirates. That would have been really fun. I wish we could have thought of it sooner.
Don’t mind Carly eating her hair. It was very windy that day. That, and she was starving. She hadn’t had her “steak on a stick” ($6, new on the food court menu this year) yet. Brian and I are too cheap to eat at the food court so we packed some sandwiches. =P Scored a free bottle of Pepsi, too. Thanks, Cory!
We had a bunch of trucks in the parade this year. No McGruff, but Wattson was present. He was on the Power Town float, which Cory found pretty cool. I really hope that April got a photo of the float because I didn’t get a picture of it. One of the downsides of being in the parade is that you get to miss out on all the cool stuff that happens right behind you.
Did I mention it was really windy?
Carly and a bunch of people from work got to hold the official “Sundown Parade” banner. No one wanted to hold the other banner so Jan and I ended up doing it.
After we finished walking in the parade, we met up with Cory and April and their family to watch the rest of it. We got there just in time to see Jan’s friend Janet with the Swing Society.
Janet got to ride the float instead of walking this year. Jan and I called out her name, but I don’t think she saw us.
We also got to see the Star Wars group, which is probably the group that Brian should have been part of… LOL!
Although, out of all of the things we saw (granted, we didn’t see much this year because we only saw the last part), I think the highlight of this year’s Sundown Parade is Christy in her Snuggie. She looked like a monk but, man, what a brilliant idea! Hey, at least hers isn’t a tan color like mine. I think that would have been worse. =P
Just kidding, Christy! You know we love you.
Anyway, since I didn’t get a lot of pictures this year, I’ll share with you the pictures I took while watching the Sundown Parade last year. This way you’ll get a sense of what watching it is like, specially if you’ve never been. Maybe you’ll decide to come check it out next year. See you all then!
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