A Tonsager Tribute: A Parade, a reunion, and a road trip...

On day 13 in Nebraska we were set to leave to make it home in time for Father's Day.

I am the MASTER of packing and managed to fit in everything I had bought and been given while down (always massive amounts) except for an old school desk that Mom and Dad later brought up. The boys only had to hold their inflatables. Luke threw a fit on the way home and grabbed Zach's and popped it, BRAT! But other than that we made it home with everything.

Hand on your heart for the flag.

Holdrege Seal, statue at the North Park.

I packed everything but the food before heading out to the SWEDISH DAYS PARADE. The parade lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes! The boys liked the tractors and seeing Grandpa and Uncle Rick in the parade.

The Swedish Horse and the Swedish flag.

Both tiny towns on either side of Holdrege; Funk to the East and Loomis to the West, were celebrating 125 years this year and had neat floats in honor of their towns' birthdays.

Dancing to Funky Town

Loomis' big birthday cake.

My dad hands out water from the back of one of the Kinetico trucks from Holdrege Soft Water where he works. They had gotten into the line up as one of the first 25 floats this year so Dad was done and back to sit with us after the first half hour.

Rick is an actor for the community theatre, "The DAM Playhouse" in Alma, Ne (and I believe does some of the sound). His group was in full costume advertising to come to their show. It was great.

Uncle Rick giving us candy.

Me trying to see how short I actually am...

We had some other relatives in the parade too! My cousin Mike and his wife and daughter on an Almond Brothers tractor and my great uncle John on the Knights float. Then my cross country coach and 8th/11th grade history teacher who is now the mayor and my youth group leader/ bus driver/ vball assistant coach and many others. It was great to see everyone.

Dan

Mike

Coach J

John

Every year Elvis and his pink Caddy are in the parade and he picks people to dance with him in the street. This is the first year in a long time that he left Tiff alone (I think it may have been all the kids surrounding her).

Nice gear Man!

the boys always ham it up & get the goods

Pretty much the whole town turns out for this event, its HUGE!

More candy then we will eat in a year, likely will be in the trick-or-treat bowl in October. (Ok, just kidding)

After the parade we grabbed the last of our stuff from the fridge and headed out to Orleans once again for the Howell family reunion (my Grandma Walker's family). It was great to see everyone and catch up. I cannot believe how TALL one of my little cousins who I used to babysit in 8th grade is now. She is 13 or 14 now and is over 6' tall! We took family photos and had traditional family reunion picnic potluck foods. 2:00pm came all too soon when we had to say our good-byes. I was jealous as the rest of the fam was going to go see Rick perform at the theater that night. As it was I was extremely tired and looking at dusk by the time I hit Hot Springs or Rapid. I am really really bad at driving at dusk and dark as my eyes fail me more each year, not to mention wildlife.

As we approached Ogallala there was a massive storm with a great looking wall cloud that dipped and bobbed south of town. I decided we would pull in and grab supper while we waited for the torrential rain and hail to pass. There was also a fire at the hotel down the street, not sure how big or caused by what, but there were lots of firetrucks. The storm set us back an hour but we didn't have to stop again until Alliance and then I believe we made it home from there, which is record breaking for us!