Aloha from Hawaii!!: Independence Day 2009

Happy 4th of July!!
I had a pretty amazing 4th of July despite celebrating it by myself. During this week I decided to check out what kind of things were planned for the 4th here on the island. To my surprise there is only 1 parade on the entire island. So I went to the 63rd annual Kailua Independence Day Parade. I had to wake up around 7 this morning in order to catch the bus so I would make it to Kailua by the time the parade started. The parade was a little over an hour long but there was plenty to see. Then I got back on the bus and headed towards Ala Moana Shopping Center where I got some lunch before going back to my apartment. I decided to take it easy before heading back to the mall for the fireworks display. Ala Moana Shopping Center hosts the island’s largest fireworks display so I figured that would be the best to go see. I got there about 2 ½ hours before the show started and found a spot to sit in the open parking ramp across from the beach park where the fireworks were to go off. They had different local bands playing music the entire time. It rained on and off the entire time I was there. But it didn’t matter to me because I’ve sat through worse on 4th of July. The show was choregraphed to music like Rhythm & Booms but definitely did not compare to it. There were as many people as there are at Rhythm & Booms and I only saw the people who were in the mall not all the people at the beach park. It was pretty crazy but still a lot of fun. I definitely have to say this is probably going to be one of my favorite days from this summer.
I painted my toes to get in the spirit.

These are the cupcakes that I made for my roommates. They all loved them.

In this picture you can see the Navy's band that started the parade in front of the yellow house.

This is the Royal Hawaiian Band that plays every Friday at Iolani Palace.

Here's one of the Waikiki trolleys that was in the parade.

Its Uncle Sam but I thought for sure that his head was going to fall off because he kept moving it around.

There were quite a few horses in the parade.

This was by far one of my favorite floats. It was done by the Enchanted Lakes Elementary School. They made replicas of all the state quarters that were placed all around the bottom as you can see in the picture below. Of course Wisconsin's quarter was on the other side so I couldn't get a picture of it.

This was the Kailua Mustangs All-Star cheer team that won their division at Nationals last year and you can see some of their trophies below.

Here's more horses and the little girl who ended up in like half my pictures.

And of course I had to take a picture of the cool yellow firetrucks we have here.

This is the parking lot where I sat to watch the fireworks. The stage is where they had performers all day long. This was about an hour and a half before the show started so there were more people there.