Homecoming in our tiny little town is always such fun. People share photos from high-school on Facebook all week. The marquees on the schools boast of activities. Our yard is full of cars every day because there is something going on at the high-school.
The kids in our family always want to ride in the parade and I never get to see it. I don’t get to take many Fridays off from work that aren’t vacation or holiday related, but this year I decided to spend the day at home with my family. I somehow convinced Taz to bow out of the parade and watch downtown with me. After dropping Ella off at the parade line up, we walked the few blocks downtown from our house.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we live in a TINY town. This is downtown. We have exactly one traffic light, a mom and pop grocery store, town hall and a few churches. If you blink, you might miss it. It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the streets were lined with people, shoulder to shoulder, as far as I could see. I had to laugh because a car slowed down and motioned for me to come over. He asked me what was going on! It’s pretty obvious that this many people aren’t normally milling about “downtown.”
We could NOT find a spot to sit that wasn’t covered in ants unless we wanted to sit in the street. We tried everything and Soph finally wound up on this rock near the town Christmas tree. Just in case you aren’t in the know, it’s the largest live tree in the state that gets decorated for the holidays!
You know the parade is coming when the police sirens start. Before long, we could see the fire trucks coming under the railroad bridge and then, the marching band was playing our fight song.
Here are our girls! This is Ella’s first glimpse of us and even though we can’t see her face, she was obviously pretty excited to see us.
One of my favorite parts of Homecoming in recent years is our Alumni Tailgate. People camp out for a few hours before the game to barbecue and reminisce. We were super excited that our Louisiana sisters were home for the weekend and we got lots of Maddie & Emma time.
I had a bit of a wardrobe crisis (thank you, Alabama, for being almost 90 degrees at kick-off), so I wasn’t wearing school colors this year. I still wanted a cute photo of my family, though.
In the spirit of keeping it real, this is what the first attempt looked like!
I got to see some of my favorite family members and we ate ourselves silly on local pork sandwiches and cupcakes. The boys tossed the football and the girls ran around chasing balloons while the mommies caught up and passed the babies around.
Unfortunately, Taz didn’t even make it until kick-off. She was asleep just moments after the Homecoming Queen was crowned. Those are the moments I’m thrilled we live in the neighborhood across the street. With a sleeping Taz in one arm and a pile of cheese fries from the concession stand in the other, I walked the half a block home. We’ll try to make it a little longer next year!
I recapped our Homecoming festivities for last year, and the year before and even for the first annual alumni tailgate here!
