Children’s Day Unraveled Part 3

This day starts early!  The kids are usually up and excited! Today is officially their day. ALL DAY.

7 am:

The Flag is honored by the local Girl Scouts with a flag raising to officially begin Children’s Day, followed by the firing of the cannon to let Mt Tabor know that they day has begun.

Immediately following, the volunteers for the Midway begin the long process of putting together the Midway as the others leave for breakfast.  One by one, neighbors emerge from thier

homes to make the magic of Children’s Day happen.

8:15 am:

Athletic Event Registration begins at 8:15 am until 9 am, when the games begin!

9am :

Everyone gets a participation ribbon and placement ribbons are awarded to the athletes after each event.

Awards are then given for overall athletic and sportsmanship at the Midway during the awards ceremony for both the

athletic events, the house decorating event and the floats.

12:15 pm:

CD Parade Line up at the Post Office.  Registration and Check in happens here for all those who have taken the

time to create their float.  Floats are accompanied by decorated bicycles, baby carriages and costumes. This year, my

kids got together and made their own float with a borrowed float bed and some advice from the Dad of their friend.

They won first place! 🙂

1:00 pm:

The Parade begins!  Participants have a grueling path to take as the parade route is very hilly in some spots.  I usually

enjoy taking a seat, right in front of my house to watch the parade.  I personally had enough of the hills during the 5k.

The floats vary from small to amazingly huge! This year, we saw Godzilla, Men in Black, an amazing Indian Elephant,

Angry Birds,  a luchador ring, to name a few.  It was fun to watch as it is every year.

1:30 pm:

The Midway fun begins!  There are pony rides, raffles, games, food, music and the Children’s Day Art Show.  There is

even free ice cream for the kids who participate in the parade, donated by the Mount Tabor Historical Society!

There are a lot of free activities for the kids, like bubbles, balloon launching, chalk, puzzles, corn sifting, jump rope,

and the like.  There are midway games you can play by purchasing tickets, including the strong man anvil game,

and other games of skill. There is a food stand operated by and to benefit the volunteer Mt Tabor Fire Department.

4:30 pm The midway closes down for the day and everyone goes home for dinner.  Some packing away of the Midway begins.

7 pm:

Assembly for the Evening Parade. All those who placed as a winner in their category march yet again and are joined by extremely loud local Firefighters who love to blast their sirens.  (This is when I usually retreat to the house) WAY too loud for even me!! (If you can believe that)

7:15 pm:

The parade is fun and is usually accompanied by some fun water hose war that usually goes on, right on my corner. For years, there has been a water fight between a certain group of  people ( I am guessing friend and relatives of the fire fighters) who try to have a water fight with the fire fighters. It is quite comical.  I will have to take pictures next year.

7:45 pm:

Lowering of the Colors

The Mt Tabor Fire Department has a ceremony with the Pastor of the Methodist Church in town, who blesses our activities for the day.

7:50 pm:

The Francis X Wentworth Sr. Memorial Concert

This concert is given every year by the Wentworth Family.  One of the largest families in Mt Tabor history,  JG Wentworth being one of the Wentworth clan, together with his family, donate money toward our annual concert. (You may recognize JG from his commercials “I want my money and I want it NOW!”  It is a gift from their family to the town of Mt Tabor.  This year, we were visited by “The Zombies” and friends. It was  a great concert, followed by awesome fireworks (the best I have seen this year) and neighborly fun, including free glow stick necklaces for all!

This year’s Children’s Day was a great success.

Loudly yours,
Alicia

ps- We have been accused of being a little too quiet in our exposure of Children’s Day as we limit our weekend to Mt Tabor residents and their guests.  Some might think it true, but you must admit, the whole weekend is provided by donations, dedication, sweat and time by our town’s neighbors,  plus,  we don’t have a lot of space to house all of the surrounding towns, so we have and will remain on the quiet side about inviting others to join us. I know it kind of stinks, but it is what it is. 🙂

A “shore” thing

It’s a Shore Thing….

We took time out of our busy week to go to the shore and play at the
water park and boardwalk rides. We met up with some cousins and the kids all had a blast!   We started at the water park and ended at the
board walk.  Breakwater Beach is a fun place to get wet with the family.
It added a new ride this year that is actually split into two and reminds me of Great Wolf  Lodge, my other favorite place to vacation. We did not get to take pictures since we do not have waterproof cameras and my phone was dying.  Ugh…. we did get some shots at the Casino Pier…

Waiting on line at the roller coaster…

 

 

 

Riding the bumper cars with my boy, Zeets….
(almost got whiplash…guess he didn’t read the signs not to bump head first!)

Okay, so I am going to cheat a little today.  Here is a post from my darling SIL who beautifully covered our day:
http://amysreallife.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/under-the-boardwalk

Loudly yours,

Alicia

Children’s Day unraveled Pt 2

Ok, so the little humidity thing I prayed for, well it didn’t work out so well.  After a looong, cold shower, I finally cooled off and got my decorations out to gussy up the porch the next day.

Friday afternoon, the decorations went up.  We had some new pieces this year and added the mid sized lights from Christmas, Cris-crossed from one end of the porch to the other.. 

 

As the sun began to set, our family, joined by others, converged to Trinity Park and headed down to the Tabernacle for the Coronation and Children’s Day Show.

First, the King and the Queen get crowned by the previous King and Queen

 

 Then the show begins!  The numbers range from a group of kids from 3 yrs and up,

 

 Then there is the crazy, adult dance….

 

 

Followed by a number for all the kids…..

This year was Children’s Day all around the world, so it was topped off with the latest version of “We Are The World” with the kids holding flags representing the Countries that represent their nationalities. It was great. 

 

 

My kids are missing the flag of Ireland, but the rest are there.  (We only had 2 kids in the show this year, so we could only pick 2 flags)

The evening is followed by the very fun house tour, where we visit the houses that have been entered in the decorating contest.  Many of the kids hang out the back of carefully driven vans, trucks and suvs. It is a very fun night, neighbors visiting neighbors, admiring their handiwork….

 

 

 

 

 The kids love it! They have so much fun riding in the back of the van!

The night would not be complete without the Coronation Ball, held for all Jr. High and High School Students who live in Mt Tabor and their guests.  (We are not big enough to accommodate everyone in Parsippany!!) There is a DJ, some goodies and dancing for all!

It is great night for everyone.

 

 Loudly yours,

Alicia

Children’s Day Unraveled Part 1

Children’s Day Unraveld Part 1

As some of you may or may not know, I live in a very different kind of town. I really can’t say it is the only one of its kind (since it has a sister town in Ocean Grove, NJ) but it certainly is different than any other town I have ever heard of or lived in for that matter. Over the next few blog posts, I am going to share some of my insights of what goes on in our little town.

Some might say that our town kind of revolves around Children’s Day. Planning is almost year round. Well, February – August, anyway.

The planning meetings start in February, then there are fund raisers, including a yummy Pancake in Breakfast in March, Bake Sale in April, Tabor Idol in June, Pizza Slide Show in July and the main event in August.

It involves many of our loyal Tabor Neighbors to get it all done!!

One of my favorite is Tabor Idol because it showcases the talent in this little town! We have so much fun putting on the show.

Today is the first day of the festivities. We have rehearsal for the Children’s Day Worship Service (which I have been running for the past 8 years), then the Howard Bell Run, a killer of a 5k in town. I will be running in the race for my 2nd time. There are 2 killer hills, but I have been training for them and I should be fine. 🙂

Here is the route:

The killer spots are right before Reservoir Park and at the far end of the page, up Woodland. I will be praying for low humidity and people out with sprinklers!

Loudly yours,
Alicia