Christmas Parade

My friend Sarah from Pearl Studs invited us to attend a local Christmas parade over by the beach.  The kids were excited about the prospect of a parade because to them parade = candy.  On the way over to Sarah's I had to break it to them that, while in fact small town parades may mean lots of candy, large city parades may not.  They were still excited to get to see Santa though.  After we ate dinner at Sarah's we walked a few streets down to the parade.  

Ready to watch the parade (I just love EJ's face!)

I love Boo's expression in this pic

While it was pretty cold out, we still had a lot of fun watching the parade.  Besides the typical fire trucks, motorcycles, and church nativity floats, there were a few large balloons of Christmas ornaments and a huge dalmatian dog.  The kids really enjoyed seeing the balloons.  Hiccup insisted on getting out of the stroller and I really had to keep an eye on her.  Several times she was trying her best to join the parade.  Hiccup then decided that she no longer needed my supervision and headed on over to Sarah.  Sarah's son CJ is Hiccup's favorite baby.  She has some kind of weird jealousy/attachment issues around him.

Hiccup hanging out with her favorite people

After awhile it started getting really cold, we were just about to give up on seeing Santa and head home when the end of the parade was spotted.  Santa's float was the kids' favorite.  It had his reindeer in flight and apparently Santa was visiting the North and South Pole at the same time because there were also penguins and polar bears by his sleigh.  After Santa's appearance we headed back to Sarah's place.  The kids only got a few candy canes but thoroughly enjoyed the glow bracelets they received.  Sarah graciously warmed us up with cups of hot chocolate and then we headed home.  It's definitely beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!