The perfect parade

I don't know how we manage to do it every year, but we always have a good parade experience! We got the same shady parking space as we do every year, and managed to find a family that lives in our neighborhood to sit with! The weather was absolutely PERFECT. Just enough cloud cover to keep it shady, but no rain!


Carissa had a great time! Her favorite part was getting ice cream (at 10:00 in the morning!) from McDonald's! She loved waving at the performers.

Her next favorite (well depending on the outcome) was running out in the street to gather up the candy that was thrown. There were plenty of tears as she wasn't quite as fast as some of the bigger kids. And once she saw that they threw out smarties, and she got taffy. Luckily, a girl watching was willing to trade her smarties for 2 taffys! It's always nice to have nice people around!

The big kids were much harder to please. But they had their music, and were pretty oblivious to the parade! They just wanted to be home in bed (go figure!) after all, it's REALLY difficult to get up before NOON! (notice their enthusiasm here!!!)

Then when it was dark enough, we cracked open the sparklers and lit some fireworks in front of our house!

Carissa was mesmerized by the lights, but that wasn't good enough for the "pyros" in my house. (it didn't help that Donavan had a friend over!) And it wasn't long before they were jumping over the flames. Scared the pants off me! It wasn't long before Carissa was laying in the grass almost falling asleep, so that ended our fireworks show for the night!