Frugal Friday With Marsha--Staycations

I went on hiatus last Friday---a staycation I will call it.  I had thought about scheduling my Friday post and then decided to just take the week off.

According to wikipedia, a staycation is "a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within driving distance, sleeping in their own beds at night. They might make day trips to local tourist sites, swimming venues, or engage in fun activities such as horseback riding, paintball, hiking or visiting museums. Most of the time it involves dining out more frequently than usual. Some people may include one or two overnight visits at relatives, friends or a longer trip."

We've never taken more than a staycation!!  Maybe some day we might afford a "real" vacation.

We picked up my daughter Heather and her 2 children in Inman, Kansas and headed to McPherson, Kansas for the 100th year celebration of All School's Day.
Wow!  I have never seen such a crowd for a parade!!  The population of McPherson is only around 13,000, but people come from the whole county as well as surrounding counties for All School's Day.
Here is a photo I snapped of the block and side of the street that we were on to watch the parade.  Eight blocks was like this on both sides!

The parade lasted about 2 hours.  I took lots of photos, but this was our favorite float.  It was mad scientists representing, I think, Humara.  They were hilarious doing their experiments and dancing to rock and roll music.

After the parade we did a little shopping at Walmart, ate lunch at McDonald's and then went back downtown for a tour of the McPherson Opera House.
It was so very interesting.  Unfortunately not many of my photos came out well at all.
I snapped this photo as we drove up the street from the outside.

This photo is of one of the upper seats.  The prime of opera seating.

The entire opera house has been restored as close to original as it could be.  Beautiful art work and design.  The history was so interesting.  We brought home a booklet with the history as well as a show booklet for the season as well.  They have a free show coming up that we hope to make it to.

In other news this week, I was able to purchase 3 raised beds for gardening through the local buy, sell, trade group on facebook.  I bought 3 of these at $10 each.  Not sure that was the best deal, especially considering when I left the gal told me $10 is what she paid for them, but never got to use them.  She may have never used them, but they were out to get weathered!  I would have talked her down a bit on price, or talked her into at least one more for the price had I known that information beforehand.  I am also thinking that these would be easy to build, so I will check on the cost of materials.
Anyway, we probably will do nothing with these this  year as we have already planted, but we are working towards the dream garden for next season.

Your turn.  I can't wait to see what is shared this week!

Squidoo Hopping--Children

Soon I am heading out the door to go to my 3 yr old grandson's Headstart Promotion.  In honor of Jacob, I am making these week's hop theme children.

Link up 1 or 2 of your lenses that are about children.  Anything to do with children  :)

Also don't forget to link up any blog posts you have written with squidoo as the subject as well!