Pancakes

Rachel and I headed off to my old hometown today for an Armed Forces Day Parade and a pancake breakfast my dad's community group has hosted forever. My dad was pretty busy with that, so it was just Rachel, my mom and I. The parade was cool, but long. We had to leave before it was done. My high school even had a severely disabled boy being pushed along in a wheelchair, every so often struggling to bring his arm up and back down on a tambourine resting in his lap. There was also a bunch of soldiers carrying large banners, each listing a name and photo and the soldier's date of birth and death - sometimes using their high school yearbook photo. There was also also a number of survivors from past wars. A very patriotic event with flyovers and military vehicles.

The parade went on long and we didn't have chairs so we finally had to walk away because we couldn't stand any longer. We had a nice time talking and walking. Eventually it was lunch time and we found a restaurant, had calzones and then parted ways. Never did see dad again.

Instead of heading straight back home, we headed to my old home. The business my dad started, grew to
multiple stores and then sold - the original store is now closed.

And then on to the house I grew up in. On sale again, less than the last time it sold. The fence in the front yard is gone, the grass is almost all gone. That neighborhood is being overtaken by nature. Amazing to see the difference between that neighborhood and ours, built two years later - ours has a strict HOA which does yearly reviews and my old neighborhood that doesn't.

And then on to my elementary school - shut down and boarded over for at least a year.

My high school and junior high seem relatively unchanged, but even more amazingly unchanged was the church I attended from an early age through high school. I don't know when we first started attending, but we met in one of the classrooms of the junior high I'd later attend, but then we built a building. Two additions were made during our time there and it pretty much just looks the same.

It was a day of eating poorly and I'm really afraid of tomorrow's weigh-in.