Veteran's Day 2009

Anthem hosts an annual veteran's day parade.  Trevor, Tanner and I went this year.  It is not a huge parade  But it is fun.  There was 1 or 2 floats, some advertisers in cars & garbage trucks, 20-25 minutes of different shriner entries ( go carts, motorcycles, camels, tricycle motorcycles.. more carts...seriously thought they would never move on.), boy scouts, girls scouts, some of the local kids theater groups, ROTC from a couple of high schools in the valley, and several veteran's groups.  It is was "marshalled" by a veteran and they have several cool old cars with older veteran's in them.  And it ended with the Boulder Creek high school band and a group of students representing all of the different clubs and stuff at the high school. 
I don't know what it is, but my heart melts at this stuff.  I see soldier's carrying the colorguard that opens the parade, and I start to tear up.  I noticed a man and his wife sitting in front of us.  They were around my grandparent's age and they were a little bit feable - not the strongest on their legs.  Yet everytime a colorguard would pass, this man (who I would bet was a wwII vet) would struggle to his feet to show his respect for the flag.  Tears overflowed from my eyes as it reminded me of my Grandpa and his service.  It is moving to see the love of country that these men have and I hope we can all share such patriotism and gratitude for the country we live in and those that sacrificed (and are still sacrificing) so much so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have.
Along with the vets and military entries, there were a few senior women's entries.  The Daughters of the American Revolution had a float, and the Red Hatters had a couple of cars full.  But my favorites were the Sun City Pom Squad (Sun City is a retirement community in the Phx area) and the Desert Springs Flag team (also a retirement community).  Here were these 65+ year old women in sequinned bodysuits marching this parade route with huge grins.  While their choreography wasn't super complicated, I was impressed that they could march all that way while swinging their arms and strutting there stuff.  There was a lady, likely 80 years old spinning the baton as she marched down the street.  It was awesome!  I told my boys that I have found my calling later in life.  They were like, "we will disown you" I said, "no problem, all I will have to do is make one call to the Grandkids saying, "Don't you want to come to a parade and see great grandma?" and they will be there!  Revenge is sweet!
Veteran's day was actually on a Wed. in here in AZ we respect holidays such as that (unlike you Utards!), so we didn't have school and since banks are closed, I didn't have to work.  I decided we needed to not just sit around all day, so we drove 15 minutes north of our house to Rock Springs, AZ - home of the best pie in AZ.  We had lunch and got a pie to go and drove back, all within an hour and a half or so.  But at least we got out of the house!  It was fun.

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