Holiday Parade

This weekend Nick and I volunteered to work at the Children's Medical Center Holiday Parade, with our friends Kristen and Craig. Kristen's mom was in charge of the parade for years. We were helping with the timing of the parade, which meant that we had to spread out down the parade route and make sure that the parade moved in an organized fashion. An even more exciting element to that, was that Nick got to wear a headset. I'm glad he was in charge of that aspect, because it was hard to hear with marching bands playing right next to you, and inevitably they always needed the parade to slow or stop right as a band was passing us.

We stayed at the Adolphus the night before the parade with Craig and Kristen. It was fun getting to get the behind the scenes tour of the hotel with Kristen, because she knew all the back ways to get ANYWHERE. Little kids swarmed the lobby, dressed in their pajamas, hanging out by the giant Christmas tree. We also had a good time teasing Craig, because he found out the 19th floor of the hotel was supposedly haunted and spent half the night researching and watching videos on the computer. I'll admit that I would have a pretty hard time going up there at night time, after watching a video of all the elevator doors randomly opening and closing over and over. Nick swears for only $500 he would spend the night in the old ballroom, that is convinently sealed off behind the walls of the remodeled top floors. Knowing him, he could probably be up there and sleep like a baby. I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything that scares Nick.

The parade was beautiful and had so many fun elements for children. They had characters from favorite kids shows, marching bands and dancers, Christmas themed floats, giant inflatables, guest appearances by Ian Kinsler and Darren Oliver (boo...we are still bitter in Dallas about his less than stellar performance in the World Series)and Santa, as well as a performance by David Archuleta (who Nick can't stand, by the way). It was fun watching it all up close kneeling on the curb at street level. The kids reactions around us were so entertaining to watch. You could just hear the excited screams of "Santa's coming!" at the end of the parade. I can't wait to take my future kids to see it!

The best moment of the day, was when the drivers of four race car floats, which were converted from golf carts, were abandoned at the end of the parade. Kristen's mom asked us if we would mind driving them in the motorcade, from downtown to Fair Park. I was a little nervous (being an inexperienced golf cart driver) but once we got on the road it was so much fun. We looked hilarious too, almost like we were driving little toy cars down the streets. There were only a few minutes, when we were driving through a shady part of town, that I was saying a silent prayer for our safety. At the end of the day, we both had an excellent and fulfilling time helping out a friend and getting ourselves in the Christmas spirit.