Just in Time!

September 22, 2008 by Jay Dietz Construction.

I know that I said I’d try to post every month.  I’m only a few days past my goal, but I have a good excuse.   I spent most of last week getting ready for the West Fest Parade.  For those of you that aren’t familiar with this parade, I’m really sorry.  It’s one of the biggest in ND, and this year was the 17th annual parade.  Jay has wanted to have his business in the parade for several years.  So, this year, I signed us up.  We have a trailer and a pick up to pull it, so all we needed was a theme for the float and some helpers, right?  The helpers part was easy.  Our daughter, Katrina, is a Brownie Scout, and her troop jumped at the opportunity to toss candy.  We had 5 very excited girls waiting in line for more than an hour for our turn for the float to pull out of the parking lot.  The theme part was not easy for us.  Jay had wanted to do something more elaborate, but he ended up working 70+ hours that week and just couldn’t put anything together for us.  SO…Katrina, the Girl Scout, stepped in with a nice sketch and a plan.  We rounded up our 2 small tents, bought some green sheets of plastic for “grass” put some firewood and lawn chairs and 1 Ficus tree.  Wallah!  It’s a camping scene.  We added some balloons and foil streamer things too.  I had also spent a total of 3 days working on a banner for our troop, so that had to be displayed proudly on the back.   The girls all looked so cute, with their sashes or vest full of patches.  They got lots of nice comments from the crowd too.  That is until, of course, we ran out of candy.  YES…I way underestimated the size of an 8 year old girls’ fist.  It seems they can hold 14 pieces of candy in one fist full.  I knew after the first block that we were in trouble.   We technically made it about 2 blocks from the end.  Now I know to buy twice as much for next year.  Jay and Jesse threw about 30 Jay Dietz Construction shirts from the pick up.  I thought I was going to see blood shed.  People were acting like the shirts were home-run baseballs in a World Series game.  

I forgot to mention that Oliver, our pre-schooler, was invited to ride on the school float, so he parted ways with us when the parade floats moved out of the parking lot.  His uncle, Trevor, was kind enough to be his grown up for the day.  Trevor said that Oliver nearly fell asleep a couple of times.  Apparently parades are boring if you’re not catching the candy.

So, until next month, be generous with your time and your talents.

 Carlita

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