Shelley Spud Days 2011

Every year Shelley has a party for potatoes. It's really quite fun and super family friendly. They start the day off with the spud run and tator tot trots and then have a parade with no candy restrictions, which my kids love. We always bank on this parade with our candy in-take. We joke that all the candy collected at this parade is used as our Halloween give away. We bring it home and put it in our candy jar where it sits and turns rock hard. Sure my kids get to eat it, but we really don't go through much sweets in our house. Our icecreams always end up freezer burned too because we don't eat it often enough. Anyways, the parade is always fun, we love it, and Jared's ego is stroked because everyone seems to know him and always throw extra candy his way.

Our Friends James and Emily, with their 5 kids, joined us this year.  

 Emily and I waiting for the parade to come.

 After the parade, everyone gathers in the park for a big baked potato feed. They give out unlimited free baked potatoes and chocolate milk. You stand in line and they have high school students running an assembly line cutting the potatoes, cheesing them, sour creaming them, and salt and peppering them. They are so good!

Jared feeding our bottomless pit of a daughter, Jordyn, some yummy baked potato.

 Then we join the potato pick up competition. They brake it up into age ranges and so each kid has a chance to win.

Eli just finished picking up his potatoes with me coaching him on the side. I was totally joking but I was yelling, "Go, go, go, faster, faster, faster, push it!" Eli was so cute and earned a quarter from the contest people. He was excited.

 Here Lexie is in the middle of picking up her potatoes. She worked really fast.

 Mackenzie initially didn't want to do it but she joined in when her friend, Anne, had an open spot right next to her.

 Their age bracket was 7-8 year olds and they gave them an entire bag of potatoes to pick up, and not just put in a metal basket but in a potato sack.  Kenzie was one of the last kids to finish but we kept cheering for her and all the hugging and praise she got afterwards made her so embarrassed that she didn't even notice that she was the last. She just covered her face with her hands and did a silly giggle.

 I wish they did and adult potato pick up, I would totally be all over that! We always leave right after this event but next year I think we might come back and watch the tug-a-war over the mashed potato pit. I might even enter it!

Before this Spud Day even began, we went to K-mart to get my brother, Ian's, hot wheels. They have these collectible hot wheels and so my brother will send out his ARMY family to K-marts all over the U.S.A. Where ever we are located, he sends us. Some of us get lucky and our tickets are picked to have first choice over the unopened boxes of Hot Wheels, and some of us are not. Last year, Sharon and I were able to get a treasure hunter hot wheel, but this year, out of all of us that went, only my daughter, Alexis, got her ticket drawn. Oh well, it is one more Hot Wheel then Ian would have had.