It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Today was our cities annual Christmas parade. Jason and I were strictly spectators, but I'm sure the beginning of a long stint as parade goers. Why you might ask? Because our kids are in various activities that participate in the parade. Jack rode on his Boy Scout Pack's float, and Caroline rode with her Pa in the Humane Society's entry. So here Jason and I were on a cold, Saturday morning up at 6:00 a.m. moving around trying to get the kids ready for the parade.

Jack, needless to say, didn't argue when I told him it was time to get dressed for the parade. Since it was cold, my mother-in-law had spent most of her Friday searching for a shirt that Jack could wear under his Wolf scout uniform plus a light jacket. It was expressed to us that the boys should wear layers under their shirts. Well, they obviously didn't know about Jack. By the time we had put everything on, including the jacket and then his shirt, the poor boy looked like the Michelin Man! So, we put his jacket on over the Class A uniform and I told Jason what I thought about the person who told me that Jack needed to put his jacket on under his uniform shirt.

Caroline was bummed because she wasn't going to be in anything. But when we got to the staging area, Jason dropped us off and said that we might see Pa and the Humane society float. That gave us an idea, in that we'd see if Caroline could ride with them. Then she'd have something to do in the parade. So Jason dropped us off at the perimeter of the staging area, and we hauled butt to where Jack's group was. The whole time we're passing floats, I'm scanning the area for Pa's truck. No such luck in the area that we passed. After we dropped Jack off at his float, we ran back to the parking lot at the stadium where most of the floats were. No Pa. So we ran back past Jack's float and finally found Pa's truck towards the beginning of the parade route. Thank goodness he agreed Caroline could ride with them, so I dropped her off and called Jason to find out where he was. I then ran back to where Jason was, and we headed to the end of the parade route.

We found a good parking space, and then took our chairs and found ourselves a good spot to watch the parade. When the Humane Society's float rounded the corner, there was Caroline in the trailer! She was smiling and waving at everybody and holding one of the rescue dogs. She was so excited because she'd seen some classmates from school along the route. I ran down to where Pa had parked his truck and got Caroline and ran back to the parade route, just in time to see Jack's float rounding the corner. I got some good pictures of them in the parade, and that's pretty much all they talked about through lunch. They had so much fun, and really enjoyed themselves.

Next year, the parade will be on our side of town, so the route will be shorter. This year, it was about 2.5 miles long. Next year, it's probably 1.5 miles long. We stayed to listen to the marching bands and then were outta there. All in all, it was a good morning.