Journey to Juneau: College Football Season Is Here...Finally!!

What a great loooong weekend for the Stickley clan. Thanks to the Army habit of taking the Friday off prior to a Monday holiday, Emilie had 4 straight days off which meant a weekend full of activities...the exhaustion demonstrated by Juneau and Nova tonight as we put them in bed was evidence of how much we managed to squeeze in.

The weekend started on Thursday night for me as the college football season FINALLY arrived...Next to Bowl Week (which Emilie is always quick to point out is actually longer than a week), this is my most anticipated sports weekend of the year. So, Emilie actually wasn't exaggerating in her last blog on Thursday when she said I was sitting in the recliner soaking in every last down.

Since we now live in a place where garage sale season comes to an end as the weather gets cooler, we spent most of Friday morning snooping out the last few garage sales, hoping it will be enough to get Emilie through until the Spring...probably not...At least the thrift stores are open year round.

The most important part of the weekend finally came at 10:00am MST on Saturday when the Buckeyes kicked off another football season.

Waiting for Kickoff...Go Buckeyes!!

The girls love to take their Ohio State flag and march around the kitchen pumping their fist in the air while I sing the fight song. (Nova is very good at chiming in with "Go Buckeyes!" at the appropriate spot in the song.) So, they definitely were excited when they heard "Fight the team across the field, show them Ohio's here!" coming from the television.

"That game was WAAAY closer than it should have been - I'm exhausted"

After a nap to recover from a nail-biting Ohio State victory, it was off to the Colorado Springs Hot Air Balloon Festival which meant some more mileage for the Radio Flyer

Feel free to come up with an appropriate caption for this picture:

Nova definitely has her dad's sweet tooth - especially for ice cream. Here she is attempting to eat her body weight in Dippin' Dots.

Hey Nova...What do you think of those Dippin' Dots?

Saturday night glow at the Hot Air Balloon Festival

The girls loved it!!

Heading to the car, Nova is WIPED OUT!!

That looks comfortable Nova, let me try that.

The highlights for Labor Day started with the parade in "Downtown" Fountain, CO. This was the girls first parade; they found their spot sitting on the curb and were ready to go...

The Army band kicked off the procession.

The girls loved how everyone kept waving at THEM!!

Juneau and Nova loved watching these little Shriner's car buzzing around the street. I'm told that back in the day, my Uncle Tim used to buzz around the parade circuit in these little things.

Since this is the former "Wild West", the parade had to include a group of ole' time gunfighters shooting pistols and rifles at each other as they came down the street. You can see what Juneau thought of the ruckus:

The parade ran well into naptime. We got the girls to lay down in the wagon but couldn't convince them to go to sleep...people kept throwing candy at them...

One of the highlights of the weekend came after the parade when we went to the festival. I had been severely disappointed when the Colorado State Fair didn't include a tractor pull on the schedule but the Fountain Fall Festival came through. And this was the best kind of tractor pull...all local guys with their old time tractors, many of which likely came straight out of the field to participate.

This sweet Farmall C kicked off the action. Our rooting efforts were best summarized by this puller's shirt: "If it ain't red, keep it in the shed!"