Elkow

The glorious Elkow

Ben driving the Elkow in the tractor parade

Jeff's Mater tractor

Nick's Zamboni tractor

Andy's awesome tank tractor.

Brad as Teen Wolf in his NHS letter jacket!

The kids ditching their bikes in the middle of the bike parade to pick up candy from the dads on tractors!

Tyler in the bike parade.

Sawyer enjoying his loot.

Abby and Audrey waiting for the parade to start.

We are fortunate to live in an awesome neighborhood that does cool stuff for the kids. Basically every house in the sub has kids elementary aged and younger. It is such an awesome place to live!

We had our sub block party on August 8th. After much concern over the weather it actually turned into a great afternoon. The 3 inches of rain that down poured on us earlier in the day cleared out and we could enjoy the party. Good thing, since about 70 people were coming and we didn't really have a back up plan, PHEW!

As you can see, the highlight of the pictures is Ben's Elkow, at least if you ask Ben it is. Our sub is called The Heights at Elkow Farms, hence the elk-cow. Our developer's last name is Elkow, he must be a little conceited if you ask me. The men decided that a tractor parade would be fun for the kids. I think the dads had as much fun, or more, than the kids did! It took Ben about 10 hours of work to construct the Elkow. First he sculpted the elk with chicken wire and used a box for the cow body. Then he attached the two with bungee cords and paper mached over the chicken wire and the boxes. Who knew that paper mache was just another one of Ben's obscure talents? The Elkow was given his namesake by Sawyer. Every time he would go to the garage and see the scary thing he would say, "Goodness!" as in, "Oh my goodness," one of the phrases I use all of the time with him when he gets into trouble - which happens to be multiple times in a day.

The parade was a success and is sure to happen again next year. I wonder what crazy idea Ben will come up with. It's sure to be entertaining and messy, whatever it is.