Reunion Parade

Last week was the annual Old Soldier's Reunion Parade. For over 150 years this has been a fun tradition that captures the essence of small town Southern life- a hot summer afternoon, friends gathered together, lemonade, hot dogs and of course, the parade. The parade is filled with marching bands, beauty queens, floats, horses, army tanks and tractors. The kids love watching everyone line-up and listening to the drum lines of the marching bands in the hours pre-parade. Ben wanted to play his drums with the bands and even "practiced" with a band. For the third straight year, we had an army tank parked in front of our house for a few hours.

The parade route begins on our street and as usual we had a group of friends over to sit back and enjoy the fun. What was unusual, was the rapid spread of sickness upon our family, some minutes before the party started. Ben was nursing a double ear infection, Leah rose that morning with a sore throat and achy flu yuck, then Clara woke up from her afternoon nap with a swollen eye that morphed into pink eye and an ear infection-don't tell her, but she looked like a little pirate girl.

This blog entry serves as a public apology to any one we may have infected and a big shout out to "Uncle Bill" (or Dr. Long to most folks in town) for making sure Clara had her eye medicine within an hour of her symptoms. Small town life is filled with many charming perks, a great one being caring and quick medical attention.

Here's to the soldiers, the South and sickness relief...maybe not in that order.