This Land, This Life, This Farmer's Wife: 30 Days of Thankfulness-Day 17

Day 17-Small Town Living

We love our small town and played a little game the other day about "if you could live in any of the surrounding towns, rank them in the order in which you would prefer to live in them and why!" Well, it was clear to all of us that THIS is the town for us to live in and we wouldn't change that. Yesterday, exemplified the small town atmosphere we love. It is a new tradition in our town to have a Lighted Christmas Parade!

We donned our Santa hats and helped with our organizations' entries. Our local 4H Club had an entry of course! It was last minute, but we are flexible and it was so much fun for he kids! Love it!

The Cub Scouts had an entry involving a tractor and trailer on which the boys collected canned good for the local food drive. Someway, somehow, we are always working for those in need in our town and that is amazing! We have a very active food pantry and clothing closet here. There is a lot of need in our little town, and there is a lot of giving going on as well.

This little Boy Scout is a little goofy….but I wouldn't trade him.

Next up is the cutest little thing ever!!! I think we need one of these out on the farm. Ours would be a hopper bottom of course instead of a van, but we haul corn and these guys haul garage doors! It's a tiny little tractor/trailer. It made it's first public debut at the homecoming parade, which is where I fell in love. You can visit the company's website here.

You can see the driver and the scale from this angle. He's crunched in behind the cab. Isn't it adorable? It would take us forever to haul corn, but I'm going to vote for one of these to be added to our fleet here on the farm. haha!
The mayor may have had the best ATV entry. That's him in the passenger seat. He worked all day on all of those lights and even had a reindeer mounted to the front with sparkly reins and a fully decorated Christmas tree finishing it off in the back.

We heard several comments that there were so many spectators at the parade, we were wondering who in our town was left to be IN the parade. The streets were hustling all day with local shoppers. We were offering buggy and even camel rides. Yes, our town has it's own camel that shows up often at festivals and most notably, our Christmas Eve service held in a barn in the middle of the country.

After the parade, Santa and Mrs. Claus were there for the kids to visit. They brought cookies and hot cocoa and the grade school children decorated the Christmas trees lining the area for Santa. Our baby wasn't going to have any part of Santa. Had he been our oldest, I would have pushed for him to sit on Santa's lap for a photo. Being that he is the third, I videoed his crying and used the video to entertain him later at supper. It's called Evolutional Parenting.

Dirty little sweet face.