Mayflower Village 4th of July Parade

Off we go to what we learned was our neighborhood's favorite holiday of the year. Our little town is actually called Mayflower Village and it's nestled in between Arcadia and Monrovia, which is all east of Pasadena. Anyway, the people here take great pride in the neighborhood. The houses are adorable and well kept. The people are friendly and festive. Flags and bunting on almost every house! So when our next door neighbor invited us to participate, off to the party store I went to find all kinds of decorations for the wagon. Here we are walking down our street to catch the parade.

No police escorts here...just kids on bikes and scooters to lead the way! Right on our very own little road!
Vinny loved catching all the candy being thrown his way.
So this little neighborhood bicycle parade turned out to be bigger than we had anticipated...these folks don't mess around!
This lemonade stand will come to you!
Towards the back of the parade, we joined in...well sort of.
Here we are walking up our street back to our new house.
Picture time! Cheese!
Happy boy with the balloons. You know what happens next, don't you?
Yup. Bye bye balloons.
Later that night we headed down to our local library park to watch Monrovia's fireworks display. They shot them off from the rooftop of the library right over the town square. People staked out their spots all day, packed picnic suppers, and danced to music provided by a local band. Our view was a bit obscured by tall trees, but that's a welcome sight for us coming from the desert for 12 years now. Vinny liked it all, in fact during any breaks, he turned to us and made his "more" sign. The fireworks display was impressive and equally thrilling was the show we came home to. They weren't kidding when they said Mayflower Village loves Independence Day. Every house was shooting off fireworks...it sounded as though we were under fire! Though amateur, these were no rinky dink firecrackers. They were big and loud! I can't believe Vinny slept through it! But really all I could think about was how much Uncle Mike would have loved this. Made me miss him.