Pella Tulip Time

This weekend my mom and dad came down from Minnesota and we decided to go to Pella's Tulip Time.  Pella is a Dutch community and they celebrate thier Dutch heritage every year with their Tulip Time Festival. I have wanted to go for the past couple of years but it has never worked out.  It finally did this year and I was excited to see what this was all about.  One of the biggest attractions is the massive amounts of Tulips that are planted throughout the city.  Unfortunately, with this years warm spring the tulip blooms have come and gone so we missed out on that.  

Throughout the day they have different performances by the dancing duchesses.  Here they are below doing one of their songs.  They sing and dance in full costume traditional Dutch songs, in wood shoes and all.  

We met up with Marc and Amber and the kiddos too.  They were there enjoying the beautiful day.  It ended up getting pretty warm though.  

We visited the Historic Dutch Villiage which was original homes to Pella when the Dutch immigrated there.  It is also where Wyatt Earp spent a few of his childhood years.  In each of the buildings they had volunteers from the community demonstrating what life was like back in the day.

I am not sure if you know this but I am a sucker for wood cut out photo opportunities.  Of course we had to take a photo here too.  

This is what takes place right before the parade.  The streets need to be scrubbed before the Tulip Queen can come down during the parade.  It is a yearly tradition for the people of Pella.  It is amazing how many of them there were!!!!  Hundreds of people of all ages.  They would use buckets and splash the water onto the street and then all the people would walk down scrubbing it.  What I love most is how the people of Pella get involved in their city's event and thier heritage.  It was pretty cool to see.  

It was a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend.  Elsie sure was tuckered out by the end of the day though.  She must have been tired because she has taken a 3.5  hour nap this morning which of course has allowed me to update the blog :)