Mermaid Festival Cutie Parade

Austin's parents came down tonight to go with us to the Mermaid Cutie Parade in downtown North Webster.  The festival has a cutie parade for children newborn to 14 years old, and then a cutie pageant for children 4 to 6 years old.  We were going to enter Hadley into the parade this year, but didn't find out the theme, Jungle Safari, until two weeks ago.  We thought it was a little too soon to be able to put together a quality float, so we opted to just go and cheer on the other contestents instead.  Ahh, who am I kidding?  We went to check out the competition and figure out to what level we need to bring the cutie thunder next year!

Everyone patiently waiting for the parade to start...

...but soon Hadley got bored and wanted to join Grandma Kim and Aunt Shelby at the grocery store where they went to get snacks, so Grandpa Mark walked with her.

Grandpa and Hadley looking down the road at the start of the parade, in the picture below.

The winners get pretty heafty scholarships in each division: walking, pulling, and motorized. 

1st place $5,000

2nd place $2,500

3rd place $1,500

4th place $1,000

The previous year's queens and kings are on the float above, and a neat little giraffe float below, in the pulling division.

I wish I would have gotten a better picture of the float below.  It was by far my favorite.  The elephant was super cool w/ fake legs for the rider, a trainer pulling it and a pooper scooper following behind.  They definitely had a lot of creativity with this float! 

The alligator float below moved back and forth as it was being pulled.  It was pretty neat!

The float below was Austin's favorite.  He liked that they went out on a limb and didn't follow the norm.  It's a "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, themed float complete with Axl Rose as the drummer.

After the parade was over we went to Pizza King on Webster Lake for a tasty dinner at Shelby's request.  Good choice, good choice!   

Watch out Mermaid Festival...Hadley's going to dominate this parade next year!