Day 336, Happy 4th of July

Putting the flags out at 6am

Today is an early morning, with the alarm set at 5:25am, I got up and headed downtown to help put up 1,100 full size flags along the streets.  The project takes about 30 people, 3 pickups, a semi-trailer and a 10' cargo trailer about an hour to put up.  Once they are all up it is pretty impressive and you can't help but have the small town all Americana feeling.

After the flags were up I had just enough time to run home and wash the Packard and get ready for the parade.  We host the 4th of July parade every year and we start registration at 8:30am.  Judging of entries is at 9am and the parade starts at 10am.  We had a just over 100 entries, which was a record and it took almost 2 hours for the parade to finish.  The police estimated that the attendance was around 8,000 people lined the streets to view the parade.  It was awesome.

I was back home by 1pm and started painting on the window trim.  I painted for several hours and until it was time to head back downtown and take the flags back up. We pick the flags up at 4pm, so people have time to go to family BBQ's and get ready for the big fireworks show at the Fairgrounds.

Again, I was back home about 5:45pm and once again started painting.  I figured if I stayed at it I could be finished by sunset.  I painted and finished all the windows at a little past 9pm. By the time I got done cleaning up the paint supplies and putting stuff back, it was about time for the fireworks show.  I pulled out a chair, turned on the radio and watched both the fireworks for Redmond and Bend.

It had been a long and busy weekend.  The fireworks were done, the 4th of July had come to a close and I was pooped.

Tomorrow I'm having the carpets cleaned, so I now had to move all the furniture out of the house and off the carpet.  It took me about an hour and a half to move everything into the kitchen, into the garage and onto the deck.  With everything out of the house I then vacuumed the entire house before I could crash in a heap.

It was a great weekend and I was exhausted.