The Blanch Herd: Hyde Park Elwood Fest

A few months ago my cousin Kelsea reached out to me and my siblings and other cousins to tell us that she and her family, plus her brother Ladd and his family, were planning to come up from Arizona to Grandma's house in July and suggesting that we should put together a Elwood cousin float for the Hyde Park parade on the 21st. The parade is a tradition that we've been watching and then "floating" in for many years, clear back to when Ladd and Kelsea would spend their summers at Grandpa and Grandma's house and continuing on through the younger cousins as Ky and Meg grew up. We haven't had an Elwood family float for quite some time, but with the addition of so many new little great-grands to the Elwood fam, we thought this would be the perfect time to bring it back. Kelsea and Perla took over the planning and design (and Perla even made t-shirts for all the cousins which was super fun!). We gathered on Grandma's driveway on Friday (the 20th) afternoon to put it all together and eat pizza and play and visit with everyone.

Gregg took Sam back to my parents' house to bed after dinner, but Cal and I stayed to watch the fireworks show at the church. That turned out to be quite the exciting event with more than one fire being started because of the fireworks. (One was probably just the firework cases or something burning in the lot where they were launching them - it didn't seem to be bothering anyone who was standing over there and they just let it burn. But the other was a grass fire in someone's yard nearby, caused when one of the fireworks exploded too close to the ground. The air was smelling extra smoky and suddenly the firetruck on duty whipped on its lights and headed down the road and behind the launching lot. Eventually the show resumed and the air cleared and all was well. But that was a first for us to witness!)

Three second cousins sitting in a tree.
(Callie, Evelyn and Ember)

Kid table! (Six of the ten great grands could
fit and eat pizza together - what a hoot!)

Bradley and Macie enjoying their fat boys.

Saturday morning was the parade. Ladd drove his truck with Dale's trailer hitched on behind with all the biggest greats and littlest grands sitting and waving and throwing candy (they ran out in the first couple of blocks!). We watched them come by and it was so fun to see Cal's robotic wave and plastered on smile change when she saw people she recognized. We walked down to meet them at the end and got to ride back to Grandpa and Grandma's house eating creamies.

All ready to roll at the line-up spot for the parade.

The parade crew.

The watching crew.

Here comes the parade!

And here come our kids!

Back at the house we took the opportunity to take some family pictures on the porch since such a lot of us Elwoods had gathered for the event. We were missing Alicia (she was traveling home from Austria for work and got there later, but didn't make it for the photo shoot), Heather, Terrell and Grace (at an Olsen Family reunion in Arizona), Megan (at school in Ohio) (it was definitely weird to have half of my siblings not there), Cardon (on his mission in Italy), and Melissa (Brodi's wife, who was in Peru, but ended up getting there on Sunday after most everyone else had gone home). Not bad for such a big group!

We had a good chuckle when we realized all the
grandmas were being called "Grandma Elwood".
That's what happens when you have five boys, eh?

All the sons and their wives.
(Dale (minus Alicia who was traveling home
from Austria), Bryan and Penny, Peggy and Richard,
Nikie and Dennis, Lisa and Ron)

The Grandpas Elwood.

The O.G.s (that is "original grandkids").
Missing Heather, Megan and Cardon.

Quite the cousin crew!
(back row: Eamon, Ladd, Eylidh, Perla, Evelyn, Nate, Bradley,
Rachelle, Spencer, Austin, Parker
middle middle: Taylor, Kelsea, Oaklee, Brodi, Mitchell
front middle: Gregg, Michael, Kylie, Emory, Chiara, Calvin, Macie,
Mallory, MaKinna
front: Callie, Kim, Sam, Grandpa, Grandma, Ember)

Yes, the kids may have been bribed with suckers
(thanks to Aunt Penny for always coming through
with treats!)

After pictures we moseyed back over to the park behind the church to eat lunch (turns out we were the only ones who got brats before the health department shut down the food booth until the food handlers permit was on premises). There were fun little carnival booths and bounce houses and face painting and a giant sandbox on the back of a semi truck and a used book sale and water spraying from the fire truck to keep us busy until nap time. The kids conked out on the way back to Providence where we put them both to bed for a couple hours before heading back to Hyde Park for more water fun with the second cousins and one last dinner on the deck.

We waited in line for a LONG time for this moment!

And they're out! (Somewhere in mid-Logan.)

Had to document the face paint design before
it got washed away in the pool.

Swing fun with Oaklee and Mitch.

While Cal and Sam were having their much needed naps I dug through my mom's photo albums to find evidence of our Elwood floats of years past. I found a few, but I knew that we had done more, so Sunday evening I looked through my own scrapbooks and albums and found some more. It was fun to send those pics to my mom, who then shared them with the rest of the family who were visiting again at Grandma's. Lots of fun memories to reminisce about!

1990 - I had to include this even though it's not a parade
pic because it is a front porch cousin pic.

1990 - zoomed in - we all got a good chuckle at how everyone
looks like their children. I'm five in this pic - the same age
as Cal. :)

1992 - this was probably the first time we
walked in the parade (before the evolution
of the float idea).

1992 - the park festivities used to include a horseback
ride that we loved to do!

There's a lack of photographic evidence for a few years, but I know somewhere in here we kids came up with the first idea for a float: Grandpa's trailer with blankets and some sort of "camping" set up. I think there was a brick fire circle that we sat around with roasting sticks. But I also remember that it rained on us, so I think we may have been huddled under blankets looking somewhat forlorn as we rode through the streets of Hyde Park.

Other memories in this time frame:

- the water slide at the park made out of half a giant pipe? on haystacks on the hill (Kelsea and I got giant bruises on our legs from going down it)

- squirt bottle tye-die shirts as a park activity

- the amazing burgers and fast service and cheap prices of the hamburger stand run by the same family for years

- the giant black plastic water slide in Grandma's backyard in the afternoon (this came after the water slide in the park years, but also caused plenty of bruising as we slid on bumpy ground and between apple trees)

1999

2000

2004

2005

2006

2006 - I loved this since we had a next generation
threesome-in-the-tree pic this year, too. (see first pic above)
(This bunch is Mallory, MaKinna and Emory)