Our summer has consisted of........

BUILDING A PARADE FLOAT!!!

Yep. I suggested to my sister Kaylene a few years ago that I thought it would be fun to build a parade float for her husband's business. And this year she decided to take me up on that. So in March, we started the planning process: deciding on the layout and colors and then trying to find out where to order supplies and, well, what to order. It's way more involved than we ever imagined! We entered into three separate celebrations: 4th of July in Alamosa, Pioneer Days in Manassa, and Stampede in Monte Vista. Stampede's theme was "Land of Cool Sunshine" so we based our float on that theme, which also fit the 4th of July theme of "American Heroes." The land of cool sunshine is the nickname for the San Luis Valley, so we used three of the things our valley is well known for: The Mountains, The Sandhill Cranes, and High Desert Farming. Perfect since we were building it for the John Deere tractor companies in the area.

Luckily, we had Bailey (and Sariah) there to help with Karly, Kaylene's baby. They are already excellent babysitters!!!

We started out building our tractor at Christopher's office, then moving it to Kaylene's house to add the foil and paint. Here, Jaelyn is adding foil to the tractor's body while Marissa watches.



Our cranes are made of paper mache, then propped onto iron legs and bases. My dad was so much help. He tried to convince us that he didn't think we could build a float and that our cranes wouldn't stand, but with his welding skills, our cranes were built to not go anywhere! And he loved every minute of helping us!

Once the tractor was completely covered with foil, we had to spray paint it John Deere green. We weren't able to find any companies that carried the right color of green, and it wouldn't have been right to make our tractor any other color!

Each piece of foil had to be crinkled before it was stapled to the platform. And on the floor we used gausimer over the top to give it more depth. The gausimer also had to be bunched and stapled into place.

The Mountains. *SIGH* They were a beast to build. It took is all day one day just to build the mountains and get them foiled. But they turned out awesome!

Almost done. Since we had never done this before, and weren't sure if we had enough foil and what we'd cover the edges with, we saved them for last. Turns out we had plenty of white, which turned out to be the best color for that area anyway.

PARADE TIME!!!

We had silver foil underneath the green gausimer, which made our "grass" sparkle. We used GOLD foil underneath the brown 'dirt' gausimer, implying the 'money' in the soil.

OOPS!

A minor accident after the second parade turned out to be deadly for our mountains. Our driver (accidently) didn't open the garage door far enough, and backed our mountains right into the door. It loosened the bolts that anchored our mountains just enough to make the whole thing wobbly. We had to drive the float from Manassa to Monte Vista, about 45 miles. We did fine until we got just 8 miles outside of Monte Vista, and it started pouring rain, and our mountains blew completely off the float!!! So Kaylene and I were out on the highway picking up bolts and mountains off the road.....lovely sight! I should mention that we went no faster than 20 miles per hour, so that 45 miles went REALLY SLOW!!!!! No worries....we spent the next two days repairing (aka rebuilding) our mountains to have it ready in time for Stampede.

*******************

We ended up winning "Best of Show" in the 4th of July Parade, which is the highest award, and we also won the "Stampede Award" in the Stampede Parade, which we believe is 2nd place. Not bad for our first float.....just watch out next year. We learned a ton and we're coming back armed with experience!

*******************