The Eleventh Commandment

Thou shalt set your chairs out early for the parades. And the twelfth is like unto it, Thou shalt attend all three parades. Check and check, I'm saved!!!

The Setting Out of the Chairs is by far an event in and of itself and one of the greatest things about Round-Up Days and the parades. I love to drive around the town and see most of the parade route covered with random chairs/benches/blankets saving peoples spots. I also love that they are left there for 3 days. The fact that there is not a large ring of lawn chair thieves just goes to show the true spirit of Round-Up Days. I took my chairs down to Grandma Billie's at 9:30 this morning and what a sight it was.

Chairs two rows deep at the park (I have never understood the desire to watch the parade from Wine's Park, all you get to see is the people lining up, two houses down from the park, now that's a different story!). Let the fun begin! Gavin & I were treated to a parade preview, there was a marching band practicing and they were headed back to the park. I thought it might have been Lehi High's band because it was on the smaller size, but when the director started giving instructions and pointing out the park on their left that they should meet him at tomorrow, I figured they weren't from here.

Now the next commandment is just as serious, are you committed to attend all three parades? By far the worst offenders are my own parents. This runs in my family, as my brothers are just as bad. One of them even left to go work out of state during Round-Up week. Come on people! Maybe we need to read "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", because I am pretty sure it mentions something about parades in there. Toni & Lew have not attended the stock parade for years (gasp!). While some may consider it the lesser of the three parades, it has a very important purpose. It starts off the Lehi Round-Up Rodeo, which I don't attend, but we can hear from Grandma Billie's backyard so that counts. This year, too make the sin even more egregious, my parents have chosen to go camping with old people. It breaks my heart this path they have chosen. The reasons are completely selfish, of course. See back in my younger days, there was an enormous tree in front of my grandma's house. It provided a vast amount of shade so you could watch the Saturday morning parade without completely melting in your seat. Then the great city of Lehi decided to put in curb and gutter. Good-bye shade tree. The parades that are in the evening are perfect, you get shade from my grandma's house, but Saturday morning we ROAST. There is another tree in my grandma's yard, maybe 20 feet from the road. This is where the old people congregate. And this is where my mom would take my hot baby or child, and hold them and play. All so I could continue to watch the parade and talk about the people in it. Now I'm going to have to take care of my kids all through the parades. I didn't sign up for this at all! These kids always ruin all my fun. Not really, they have so much fun grabbing as much candy as possible, sometimes I wonder if they notice the rest of the parade going by.

My cousin Annie (who is fully committed to 3 days of FUN) asked if Josh enjoyed it as much as I do. I think he does. He has taken to an early morning bike ride on Saturday morning and then makes it to the parade about half way through. You will need to come back tomorrow for some super fun info about Josh and parades! You won't want to miss it.

As for now, Go and sin no more. The stock parade starts at 6:00pm sharp!