Sunday, November 20, 2011

Downtown in Our Crazy Home Town

Way too early for a Saturday morning, we headed downtown to catch Raleigh's annual Christmas parade.

Here's a bit of trivia for you: Raleigh has had their parade on the weekend before Thanksgiving for the past 63 years. So don't complain, all you grinches. They aren't going to change a tradition.

I have to say, though, Raleigh has a pretty interesting way of kicking off the holiday season....

There were storm troopers.

parade 2011

A giant toilet.

parade 2011

A half-deflated Animal balloon that I'm not sure made it to the end of the parade.

parade 2011

Didn't Jesus have a llama?

parade 2011

I hear tell that this fellow was on some TV show that I never watch. He is much cuter on his poster than in person.

parade 2011

In my opinion, the highlight of the parade was when one of the horses crapped in the middle of the road, and then we watched on the edge of our seats for the next half hour to see if one of the bands would march right through the crap. No one did (phew!), and eventually, another group of horses passed by with a designated crap-picker-upper. Everyone cheered. Highlight of the parade, I'm telling you.

Rylan would probably tell you it was the monster trucks, though.

parade 2011

In the photo below, Rylan had just dropped his hot chocolate. All of their expressions are priceless!

parade 2011

I have already scoped out our seats for next year. They will be closer to the courthouse on the far side of Fayetteville...The sun came up over there a couple hours before it reached our spot, and I saw people taking off their coats while I was huddling up with Eli to keep warm.

parade 2011

parade 2011

Christmas Parades Gone By

5 comments:

  1. We should take our kids sometime, they'd love it, but we hate battling the crowds to get in and out of things like that and seems as though we are more grumpy/frustrated than enjoying ourselves.

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  2. Kim, it actually wasn't so bad when we got there early enough. We brought some chairs and picked a spot right outside of Crema, bought some of their hot chocolate and some books and the kids played around.

    The cold was the biggest discomfort and that's just a matter of picking a better spot next year :)

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  3. It helped that we didn't have to fight with any traffic. If you guys ever want to park at our house, it's only a half a mile walk to downtown.

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  4. We had a sunny spot. Perfect! I love the HS bands best. Hate all of those floats with "Miss NC Princess something". Scotia turn your head...

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  5. Jessica - I soooo agree. I felt so bad for those little girls with their little blonde ringlets and caked on make-up. Here's a bit of trivia about me, though - I actually participated in one of those competitions in high school (Jr. Miss). One of the most embarrassing experiences of my life, but I won a small scholarship from it. I would do anything for scholarship money.

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