America's Big Brass Band

Our first weekend as a family and Danville is having the Big Brass Band concert all weekend.  I think that we missed alot of it because I didn't realize how much stuff was going on with it.  So next year we will do more.  But for this year we had a great time and enjoyed just walking around town and meeting people.

Saturday we went to the college were the main stage was set up.  Everyone came and stayed for the whole day...so we got there to late to get a good shade tree, but we still enjoyed sitting in the grass and listening to a couple of different band perform.  This is looking up at the stage.  I didn't get a very good picture, but all around the stage were huge trees with people sitting in chairs and on blankets.  I was reading that they average between 20,000 and 30,000 people attend each year.  We were looking up the bands and there was one from Canada, and the rest from Kentucky and the surrounding states.

The boys were also given bead necklaces that were handed out during the parade in the morning, but we missed that.  We will do that next year.  The bands all march down the street and it is also a classic car parade...I have one little boy that would have loved to see the cars in the parade.  There was also an instrument "petting zoo" for the kids.  It was hosted by the high school and all the different instruments that are in a brass band are out for the kids to play.  The boys loved blowing all the horns. 

There were also performer set up in different areas around town.  There were some that were playing on the courthouse steps, and under various shade trees around the college.  It was really an experience to see.  All of the people enjoying the music were dressed in red, white and blue....so I have made a mental note to myself to make sure that we are dressed accordingly...hahaha.

On Sunday we met a couple of families from church over at the local airport to watch the hot air balloon race.  It was actually suppose to be Friday, but there were some storms in the area and it got postponed to Sunday.  We had so much fun getting to know some people from church.  We just packed a picnic and lined up on the side of the runway with everyone in town who was willing to brave the heat.  I never did count how many balloons we saw, but it was fun to see how fast they can blow up and launch.  I am not sure where the race ended, but it fun to get to see the start of it.