Whales in Space

Every year in a near-by town there's a festival called Whaling Days.  It's to celebrate the town's past history and helps raise money for different things in the area.  There's a fair thingie with rides and booths and I'm not totally sure what else, since I've never been!  Then why am I writing about it you ask?  There's also a parade and for the past two years I've been in charge of the float.  The only reason I said yes last year was because I have a secret weapon.

In his past life, The Man used to build sets.  How much different is a float from a set?  Well one moves and the other stays put!  There are many more differences I know but I figured it was close enough.  My husband loves me enough that he went along with it.  We (he) did such a great job last year that they asked me (us) to be in charge of it again.  Sure, we said.  It would be no problem.  We didn't think to ask what the theme was this year.  Every year they do the float theme based on VBS (Vacation Bible School).  This year's theme has to with space.  This year they thought it would be great if we could win a prize so do that there needed to be whales in it somehow.  So we needed to put whales in space.

I asked my Twitter friends for ideas and the 4th Star Trek movie came up.  We seriously considered recreating that when I said no.  One, it's not in space and two, I didn't want to have to build the Golden gate Bridge.  I wanted something easier.  After some discussion, we decided to have whales jumping out of the ocean going into space and then going back in the ocean.  Easy, right?

Part of the earth

The Man working on getting the whales to fly

The flying mechanism and the starry fabir

Mounting the sun

The awesome paint job...there are some talented people in the congregation!

Parade ready!

If you'd like to see the whales in action, there's an 8 second video on my Facebook page.

The float was a huge hit!  The congregation loved it.  I think we'll be doing the float next year too...We're hoping we get to pick the theme next year.

I also need to say a huge THANK YOU to my amazing husband for being the driving force behind this.  It wouldn't have been completed without him.  I also need to thank the two amazing painter and the great family that let us take over their garage so we could finish putting it together.  The family also helped us out and we were finished by 9pm the night before.  I love seeing what teamwork can accomplish!