February 25th, 2020

It's that time of year again.   The Parade of Homes!

As you all probably remember, Tim and I are huge fans of visiting Model Homes.  We both are really into architecture and design but we also get a lot of really great ideas from these visits.  We have this mental check list of things that we would want to incorporate into our "dream home".  The list often changes as we come across great new ideas and see things we never even thought of before.  It's fun, free entertainment.

In the official publication, "Parade of Homes 2020" for our general vicinity, there had to be at least 100 homes.  I cannot imagine visiting them all.  Does anybody do that?  I mean, Tim and I really LOVE going to model homes and we wouldn't want to see them all.  So if we participate, we will definitely pick and choose a reasonable number from the catalog and visit just those.

And I'm not absolutely certain that we will.  

You'd think it would be a slam-dunk decision right?  

There are a lot of really good reasons to go.  1. The representatives at each home already know that most of the visitors are just lookie-loo's and aren't going to buy anything that day so they are not pestering about registering so that they can contact you every week for the rest of your life.  That's a real good reason right there.  2. Often they make it kind of a celebration and there is free food and cold bottles of water, sometimes music and other festive occasion type stuff.  That's fun.  and 3. there are so many to choose from.  It's not just a one and done.    

But there are an equal number of reasons to not go. 1. Crowds.  I cannot begin to tell  you how much I do not like crowds and there are always masses of people attending these events.  2.  Same Basic Floor Plan.  It gets old pretty quickly when at least half of the houses seem to be the exact same house but with a different sofa in the living room.  An enormous number of builders seem to just build one basic design.  Sometimes the garage is on the left and sometimes on the right but it's the same doggone house over and over.  Even if it's a GREAT house, I have already seen it.  Show me something different please.  3. Sometimes the directions to the homes listed are, shall we say, lacking.  And in fact, in a few cases, the directions were just flat out wrong.    Editing is a real thing people. Get it together.

So we shall see if it's something we actually do.  Time will tell.  We didn't go this past weekend which was the opening few days.  We shall see if one of the next weekends finds us visiting a few of the houses in the catalog. Perhaps we will. Perhaps we won't.  Even we don't know yet.

I will say that the name of the event makes me laugh.  Parade of Homes.  Parade indeed.  The homes aren't parading.  The people are.

It's a Parade of People in and out of Homes.

The mental image of various homes parading up and down the streets followed by high school bands, twirlers, clowns and those guys on those tiny motorcycles just cracks me up.

I know about parades. Mainly because of my father.

My Dad began and then ran the annual Independence Day parade in Groton Connecticut for many years.  Which means that various family members got drafted to help out.  No worries, we enjoyed every minute of it.  My dad loved parades and when my parents first moved to Connecticut they were surprised and disappointed when the first July 4th came and went with no parade.  So my dad did something about it.  He went to the city council and talked about it so passionately that they basically said, "If you want a parade so badly, make it happen."  And so he did.  And every single year, the parade got bigger and better and more fun and better attended. It. Was. Awesome!

And never once, in all those years, did I ever see a house come marching or driving or floating down the street in his parade.  Horses, yes.  Musicians, absolutely.  Boyscouts, gymnastic teams, fire trucks, little leaguers, and hundreds of others but never once a house.

I know that they won't change the name of the event.  But every single time I read it, I giggle a little bit to myself.  Parade of homes indeed.