The Orange City Tulip Festival (lots of pictures)

Thursday, we went to the Orange City Tulip Festival. This is the first time that I have been able to attend a tulip festival, and it was really a lot of fun. We went to the parade, which started with the Fietsen Zangers (bicycle singers). Then, the Straat Feest started. The Straat Feest had traditional dutch dancing, kindergames, the mode show (a paprade of all of the clothing worn in each of the provinces in the Neatherlands), and the Tulip Queen and her court were announced. After Straat Feest, the parade started. It was fun to see the local marching bands (marching dutchmen, etc.) perform. There were also some pretty elaborate floats.

Fietsen Zangers

Mode Show

Dutch Dancing

Cleaning the streets
It was a lot of fun watching the men and little boys throwing water on the streets and then the women, little girls and a few small boys came and swept the street.

Then the parade started. With the Marching Dutchmen, the local public high school's marching band.

Then came floats interspersed with more marching bands, tractors, unicycle riders, etc.

After the parade was over, we walked around a little bit. Then Zack and Dad headed back to my Aunt and Uncle's house to help my Uncle put some bees in hives, while my mother and Aunt and I went to the quilt show and the Tulip Garden.

Zack and I in the giant wooden shoe

Carnival rides

The Straat Maart or street Market had vender's booths with traditional dutch store fronts.

Thursday night was the "cousin's party," which is a gathering of my mother's first cousins. There are a lot of them. I had never met most of them, but they were very nice. We had a really good buffet style dinner and were going to play rook, but one of the cousins, Glen, had brought a CD with old slides that his father had taken on it, so the cousins sat and watched that pointing out who everyone was in all of the pictures. There were a few of my mom which was fun, since I have not really ever seen pictures of her as a little girl.