Jon had to work today (taking customers to the Michigan Game...work, right?) but we have a family tradition of making it downtown for the kick off of the holiday season, which is the Santa parade and I didn't want to miss it. Why, WHY I ask must they hold this shindig at 9:00 in the freezing morning?
We bundled up in undershirts, shirts and sweatshirts to make our way down to the parade route. All Ryan wanted to know is when we were going to open the bag of muffins we brought. That kid has been practically eating us out of house and home lately.
They moved the route this year and I was confused as to where it was going to be coming in, so we parked ourselves right on a corner and because there was one billion people already, we sat back up on a ledge so they could see over people's heads.
But then we realized we couldn't even see over the heads when we were up on ledge.
Waving just wasn't the same when you were too far away to get candy.
So we cleverly moved to a remote location down the street where the parade was lined up! We had the people all to ourselves and the kids started getting handfuls of candy because they were the first kids people saw! Classic move, Jen...
The people in character were stopping for hugs and high fives and I was so proud of myself for thinking of it. One billion people downtown and my kids had pick of the litter. SIMPLY GENIOUS!
This is no rinky dink parade either people, this is like Macy's Day...huge balloons towering over the street and floats too. I think in total we were there 1 1/2 hours before the kids were like "Mom, we don't need any more candy canes, let's go!"
This lady in particular stopped because Ryan had an Ohio State Buckeyes sweatshirt on and she played their fight song on her tuba for him. He of course was oblivious to what she was stopping for, so I told her it wasn't his fault...it was his fathers.
Well, like any party...ours got rained on soon enough. This old bat moved in with these two boys and because naughty boy in the front wasn't sitting up in his chair she hauled off and kicked the back of it and he fell right out! And we always say "if they do that to a child in public, what do they do behind closed doors?" Old witch.
So we started making out way back to the car and all along I was telling Ryan, don't worry Santa is way up there...do you see that blue sign? He's on that float...imagine his disappointment when we neared the float and there was an eagle on it. I swore the big red suit wearing thing was Santa from a distance!
Another year's tradition down in the books...
