Yankee Homecoming

Rather than put on an event for a single day, such as the Fourth of July, our town puts on eight days of events - events that run from morning until night. Our fantastic weather allowed us to take in many of the Yankee Homecoming events this year.

Among the events we attended were an Entrain concert and the Yankee Homecoming parade.

Given that both Oliver and Carragh love to dance we thought the two of them would be dancing up a storm to Entrain. Instead the two of them pulled up chairs (thank you to the little girls who let us borrow them) and shoveled down popcorn (thank you to the mom who let them steal the popcorn (our packed snacks were clearly not the right ones)).

Note that Oliver still does the odd open mouth - jazz hand smile when he knows he's getting his picture taken. In talking with an older kid at the concert I was informed that the smile and hands is all the rage with the older set - cool beyond his years I guess.
Before we headed out to the parade I told Oliver we could get a balloon if we saw someone selling them. Famous last words- as soon as we got to the parade he wanted a balloon. Of course there were four million vendors who walked past us, but all had loads of other things, but no balloons. I ended up walking several blocks to find someone selling a balloon. In my haste to return with the balloon I almost knocked a man in the face with the balloon - he looked familiar, but I thought nothing of it. When I got back to our spot I learned it was our Senator Scott Brown who I'd almost taken out with the balloon. Oops - not someone I had expected to run into at the parade.

Oliver confiscated my chair, so I took his (notice a theme here? Oliver taking stuff. His new thing is to take it and look you straight in the eye and say "This is Oliver's" over and over again. If you respond by saying something like, "No, that is mommy's," he will just try the stare down approach again. I think he's employing some sort of hypnosis thing, or perhaps trying his hand at being a Jedi).
Of course, with the weather being as incredible has it has been, we couldn't spend all of our time at events - we had to head to the beach. And this weekend the most amazing thing in the world happened - Oliver announced he was tired and then napped for close to an hour and half - at the beach! Between Oliver's nap and having both my parents, Davis, and Elizabeth and Kevin at the beach - I got to spend an afternoon sitting in a beach chair and reading. I almost didn't remember how wonderful that is.