Columbus Day

Before we descended upon Heather, Aunt Mary sent her a couple of photos.  One was of Dad when he was 11 or so.  The other was a gem from around 1974 or so.  I love this one.

We don't look too shabby now either.  And bonus, I have my front teeth.

Today, we woke up to a beautiful day for a parade.

Apparently, Columbus Day is a big deal in Harrison, NY.  There is even a statue of him on the main drag.

In the parade there were lots of cars

and bands of different kinds -- high school marching, drumming, and a college bag pipe group.

There was a big group of Tae Kwon Do students.  They would march and then stop and give a demonstration.  We watched a few black belts do flying side kicks and spinning front kicks.  Quite exciting.  I guess I was engrossed in the performance and forgot to take a picture or two.  Lots of politicians were handing out leaflets and shaking hands.  Early on we learned to say, "Hi, I'm front out of town" and that seemed to shorten the encounter.  It was a fun way to spend part of our morning.

After an hour or so, the parade was still going strong but we decided to walk up the street to the parade end point where they had games and carnival style bouncy houses.  By the time we got there, the ticket line was very long as well as the lines for the individual games.  Joshua was disappointed that we skipped those activities.  We did find a football toss and Selim managed to get the ball through a hole and win a prize -- a green laser flashlight key chain thing.

We walked back to Heather's and caught the last parade members, the town fire trucks.  Their loud horn blasts did not make us happy.  However, we did like their flashing lights.  Luckily, we were walking in the opposite direction and so we didn't have to listen to the honking for very long.

After a tasty lunch of left overs, we packed up the car.  None of us wanted to say goodbye.  We took a few pictures because I have a need to document and document some more, including the ice cream popsicles in Marmaroneck.  Oh my, they are so good.  I don't think the scale is going to be my friend tomorrow morning, as this was the second time we indulged this weekend.  We got pistachio, vanilla, dulce de leche, blackberry and chocolate covered vanilla.  Since we were all family and not germaphobes, we sampled freely.  I think the pistachio might be the best.

We hugged goodbye on the sidewalk.  I'm not sure when we will be seeing Heather, Stan, and Joshua again.  Hopefully it won't be too long.  Luckily, we will be seeing Dad and Valerie in two weeks when they are coming through town on their way to return the rental car in Boston.  Selim was asleep within twenty minutes once we got back on the road.  A little less than five hours later, we pulled into our own driveway, opened the door and discovered that Nedim had cooked dinner for us.  Home sah-weeeeet home!