Mitchell Family Simple Living: Pioneer Day in Melbourne Arkansas and Family Fun

It's important to have fun as a family as much as possible, especially when you work as hard as we do. It's important to keep morale up and to keep life from being drudgery. Late spring and summer offers tons of opportunities for fun. One of the first opportunities in our little neighborhood is Pioneer Day in Melbourne Arkansas. I suppose it's like any small town shindig. You have a parade, some vendors, may be a bounce house, various businesses advertising their services, a live band, dancing in the square, and of course lots of people from out of town.

That pretty much covers what it's like, but if you look closer, you will see families gathered together for the first time in months. You will see friends that haven't seen each other in weeks You will see children running to hug their teacher or pastor. What you see is coming together, and Pioneer Day is just an excuse to do it.

We went to Pioneer Day, and with in seconds of parking children were hugging friends they hadn't seen in weeks. Heck, two tried to climb in my friend's vehicle just to talk to my girls. They squealed, they begged mom can we please go...and I obliged. They wanted to ride the fire truck. The ride was free, They had a blast.

So I and my boys, along with my friend, walked into town looking for a spot in the shade to watch the parade from. My son carried the folding chair for me. We soon found a comfy spot and sipped our recently acquired soda's.

The boys with their new sodas.

Alestria chilling with his lunch.

We waited patiently for the parade to start, comfy, in the shade, and watching everyone get together. While we waited, we may have indulged in some less than healthy, but none the less delicious BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. Then, after a short period of time my girls and my friends daughter showed up to watch the parade with us.

Then the parade was underway. The girls and boys were excitied to get candy.

Aukxsona and Lucy waiting for the parade to start.

There were all sorts of things that went in the parade, farm implements, tractors, horses, bulls, trucks. What follows is a small sampling of the parade.

Alestria enjoyed this display a lot.

This truck Illyan loved.

This is a John Deer the boys liked.

This mustang is what I always wanted.

I also liked this car.

Another old tractor that Illyan liked.

At this point, the girls mentioned they wanted to see the horses. The girls look forward to the horses every year. Some years we have a whole lot of horses. This year we didn't have as many as usual, but the ones we did see were absolutely stunning.