White River Water Carnival

OK~ So the Water Carnival is one of my favorite things about living in Batesville. From the first year I lived here to present day, I have been to some aspect of the event (river activities, parade, etc...). More recently, like the past 5 years, I have been working with the White River Pageant Association. This was my lucky year-HAHA!!! Somehow, I ended up chairing the WRPA. I leaned a lot on a new great friend of mine, Mark Sparks. But there is just something about being the one ultimately in charge. Especially if the ship is going down. Don't get me wrong, I do love the pageant and when it gets to the week of, I really do enjoy working and watching, but the preparation is unreal. I guess that is true with any production. My main qualm is that people are under the assumption that if they can't or just don't want to complete their duty that the chairman will either find someone to complete the task or do it HERSELF (in my case). Matt has been a trooper through the whole ordeal, although he kept asking where the perks were. This sort of thing is not really his "cup of tea." It's kind of been my tradition to "take off" on Saturday and spend the day with my kids. That was really a lifesaver this year because I don't think I could have done one more consecutive day. So, we went to the parade and down to the river to check out the festivities going on down there. It is kind of a tradition now that we watch the parade at our good friends (watch out, here comes a hyperlink), the Brisseys, so we just spent the entire day with them. The two "queens" are our last years Miss White River and White River's Outstanding Teen, who is now Arkansas' Outstanding Teen. It was a scorcher, but we had fun!