The Fourth of July-Melba Idaho :)

Melba, Idaho, is a little place.  It's not the 

"don't blink or you'll miss it" 

when you pass it on the freeway kind of place.  

It's more the 

"there's no freeway within 40 minutes and you have to want to be there and be able to navigate through a lot of farmland to find it" 

kind of place.  

Somehow two of my siblings ended up living there and so, in search of a small town American Independence Day celebration, off we went.

It's a six hour drive from Alpine.  With a couple of stops, it was seven.

Vitaly does not love riding in the car.  Also, he does not love wearing a seat belt.

He did okay on both counts, but with a few reminders about the seat belt.

In one day in small town America, Vitaly did the following:

Saw a parade -- not the military-goose-stepping-soldier-Soviet-style-parade more common in Eastern Europe. 

 This was a led-by-the-Boy-Scouts-2-Elvis-impersonators-rodeo queens-motorcycle-gang-anyone-who-wants-to-be-in-it-is-welcome-style of parade.  

He looked a bit muddled when the first handful of candy hit his chest and fell to the ground.  

By the end, he was scrambling with the others for smarties, tootsie rolls, and good old salt water taffy.  

He especially seemed to enjoy all of the classic cars and the rodeo queens.

He's definitely a 15 year old boy.

Carnival games -- There was a huge carnival on the school grounds.  Every little kid carnival game known to man was there.  He played every single one.  

Every. Single. One.  

It was fun to watch and realize he'd probably never done anything like that before.

Rode a mechanical bull -- I'd never actually seen one of these in real life, but that's why we went to Melba, right?  We bought him a ticket, he watched one guy get up and get thrown in about 7 seconds.  

“Нет, нет, нет”! was his response.  

We convinced him the "bull" could be slowed down and let him watch a younger boy ride.  I'm not sure how reassured he was when the younger boy fell off the back of the bull, got smacked in the mouth coming down, and walked away bleeding and crying.  

Awesome.  

Vitaly was up next, and after Jeff's translation of the instructions did great. I'm still not sure how much fun he had though.

Rode a horse -- A real one.  

He liked this much better as was evidenced by the posing for pictures, gesturing for still more pictures to be taken, and the huge (and rare) grin on his face.

Ate a foot-long corn dog and his first ever snow cone -- Carnival food. 

 Enough said.

Chicken chase -- He chased chickens.  He caught chickens.  Did you know if you catch a chicken in the chicken chase, 

it's yours to keep?  I didn't.  Luckily, Aunt Georgette has a neighbor who wanted chickens.  Whew.

Soccer -- There have been very few days without Vitaly's foot connecting with a soccer ball.  Luckily for him, there was a carnival game involving kicking a ball through a hole in a board. Over, and over, and over again.  When I was exhausted and just wanted to sit in the shade he said, 

"Can I go play soccer?"  

Go.  Go.  

Who cares if it's 95 degrees out?

And then....after all of that.  We went to the party house.  Georgette's friend was having a barbecue and we were invited.  In one backyard there was:

A bouncy castle with a water slide 

and an enormous spider man on the outside.

An in ground trampoline.

An above ground swimming pool.

A ping-pong table

 (which Vitaly used to humble any and all takers).

A volleyball net.

A buffet table laden with all good barbecue food.

Five coolers of soda pop (I'm guessing a minimum of 7 were consumed).

A fire pit (s'mores were a hit).

The most awesome viewing point for a surprisingly (only because Melba is such a small town)

 amazing fireworks show, 

complete with live music and huge balls of fire.

And then, because it takes over an hour for the streets of little Melba to clear themselves of all of their visitors, the party people at the party house had set up an outdoor viewing of the movie Tangled.

Yes, it was an exhausting day for everyone.  

We drove back to our hotel and collapsed.  

Melba can throw a good party.  

Thank you Melba and the party people 

(one was my very own brother!--the head party planner actually).