Simply Stanislav: Tulip Festival!

This past weekend Orange City celebrated the 72nd annual Tulip Festival. The only thing we were missing was tulips! I tried to document the festival pretty well to give my Upland friends a visual of what you've heard some of us talking about:-)

The festival runs Thursday through Saturday, followed by community worship in the park on Sunday morning. There are two parades every day, at 2:00 and 6:30. Before the afternoon parade begins there are Dutch dancing demonstrations by groups of adults, junior high or high school students, and upper elementary students. I think the elementary students practice in PE to prepare.

Here is a group of the adult Dutch dancers.

The junior high/high school kids

The elementary kids

It was extremely hot the first couple of days, and as we were waiting for Mady to scrub streets Drew entertained himself with Papa Danny in one of the tubs of water.

Before each afternoon parade members of the city council deem the streets to be too dirty for the queen and her court and call on people to come and scrub the streets. The men and boys come through first with buckets that they fill with water found in tubs lining the street and they soak the streets (the little boys are more interested in soaking each other).

Once the streets are good and wet, the women and girls follow behind with brooms and sweep the streets clean. Mady participated in street sweeping, or as she said, dusting the streets, in the Thursday and Saturday parades.

Grandma Jana had her hands full keeping Mady and Kaylee going. Maybe that's why they were bringing up the rear by the time they walked past us! By this point they had walked about four blocks.

My favorite part of each parade is the Pride of the Dutchmen Marching Band, the high school band from my dad's school. They are phenomenal! Two of my cousins are in the band so Mady enjoyed watching for them. Next winter the band will be marching in the Rose Parade.

Mady was super excited to see the Tulip Queen and her court. I'm glad I didn't have to walk around in those costumes all three days of the festival!

After the parade Papa and the kids cooled off with a malt.

We had supper at home that night since we were too exhausted to stay downtown in the heat. Doesn't Drew look so grown up here?

Mady and her friend Natalie enjoyed the afternoon parade sitting in the remaining few inches of water left over from the street cleaning. They were too cute!

Drew preferred the chair.

There is a big carnival that goes from Wednesday through Saturday. Mady got to go on the carousel with her friend Lily and she went on the ferris wheel with Nick and Kaylee as well. She loved both rides. I'm kind of dreading when she gets older and wants to ride more and more of them. They aren't cheap!