Just a few quick photos from the July 4th parade festivities on Friday. As is our tradition, we gathered in Chelmsford for the road race and parade. We had a wide assortment of friends and family running in the pre-parade road race again this year. Almost always leading the pack is an assortment of various Blakes with Stephen striking the classic Stephen "Heyyyyyyy!" pose, even while running. He was followed by Chaz, sporting the wind-blown hair look, who cut across the race crowd to high-five his adoring audience. Chaz was followed by an assortment of variousrunners from the "C" family, including this one who blew by so fast that I only had time to snap a few shots of her going away.
After all of the runners (over 2000 of them, I'm told) had finished, the parade began. The parade as always, was great fun, lots of veterans groups, trucks and marching bands, etc. I was not in too much of a picture-snapping mood for some reason, but I do regret missing one shot. One of the bands was preceded by two teen aged girls holing a banner that declared that the following band was sponsored by the Jean d'Arc Credit union. As luck would have it, the parade came to a brief stop with them right in front of us. Immediately, Charlie starts yelling "OH YEAH! JEAN D'ARC!!, NO ATM FEES! FREE CHECKING!! WOO HOO!!" Andrew almost instantly joins in, "YEAH! MY BANK!! GIVE THEM MY CHECK EVERY WEEK!! OH YEAH!!!" The are joined by various Blakes and who-knows-who-else, cheering and clapping. The two banner girls looked REALLY embarrassed. Would have made a great picture.
A great time was had by all. The high point of the parade, as always, came during a break in the parade action, when a gap opened up in front of us in parade line. Though the gap only lasted a minute or less, it was plenty of time for Raymond to run out into the parade route and do his Parade Dance!! (make sure you give the photo time to fully load!)