Saturday, May 23, 2009

Hobart's Celebration of Freedom



This picture is Trish with Raynie. Gabe didn’t want to go to the concert tonight, so he stayed home with Raynie and Grace. Raynie fell asleep shortly after we left and slept until Trish and Rob came home, so she’s really wound up. She was really laughing when I took this shot.



Today was a really full day, and it finished with a concert with several things leading up to a performance by Neal McCoy and Wayne Newton. No lie; right here in Hobart! We went at 4:30 so we’d get a good place for our lawn chairs on the football field. They served really good barbecue and then the performers all started around 5. About 5:30 it started raining. We sat in the rain until almost 10. Trish, Rob, Sadie and Mason came on home around 8, I think. I should have gone with them. I’m sure I could have heard it all from the house and I didn’t see a bit of the concert. I forget that people stand for a concert. My knee insisted I couldn’t stand, plus I couldn’t have seen over the people if I had. It’s just not a place I should go. I’ve been short all my life, so I should have known better. It was fun to hear the performances, but I really would have rather been home with the kids. The good thing is that we got a good parking place, so I could easily go to the car and get umbrellas and an afghan to keep me warm. Another good thing is that we saw lots of people we know. One person we saw was our plumber, which was really good because we pulled the knob off one of the bathtubs last night. He’ll come and fix it as soon as he can get to it. We have plenty of bathrooms, so we don’t have to be in a rush.



I’m still amazed that Hobart could pull of a celebration like we had today. This was the first and the city plans to make it an annual event. We had an awesome quilt show with over 100 quilts. We had an art festival that filled up the whole town square with all kinds of art and crafts. The library had a great book sale. General Tommy Franks officially opened his museum. There was a poker run and a huge parade. There was also a big fly in at the airport this morning. During the concert a huge DC 7 flew over and dropped 13 paratroopers to the field. It was all pretty awesome.



We were expecting 6-7,000 people, but I don’t think there were that many here at any one time. At the concert tonight, I think there may have been 2,500 sitting out there in the rain. They’ll tell us in next week’s paper what the numbers really were. There could easily have been a total of 7,000 folks here today for the different activities. We didn’t do it all, but I feel like I did. I’m really tired. While we were at the square for lunch and Arts on the Square, Grace asked me why most of the people in Hobart are grandmas and grandpas. It’s wonderful that a community of old folks could have such a great event. Of course we have lots of young folks and for them we sure give thanks. God has blessed us with a great mix of people; we are mostly grandmas and grandpas, but there are enough young people to energize our community and enough young folks who visit to brighten our lives, too. Thank you, God.

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