Andrew and his teacher Ms. Cori
In our 13 years of living in Long Beach, we have never gone to the famous Belmont Shore Christmas parade, and now I know why...it is Maddness! This year not only did we attend, but we were in it! Andrew's preschool received a sponsor and we pulled it off. We all contributed home made decorations and put it all together the morning of the parade. We gathered for a pre-parade party at one of the parent's houses that lives near 2nd street. The kids all wore their tye-dye shirts and Santa hats. Andrew and I were on the float while Paul pulled Allison in the wagon behind us. It was a great plan until the parade started and Allison became afraid of all the hundreds of people staring and saying hello to her. So poor Paul ended up carrying her most of the way. We had a band on the float and the kids had home made maracas, needless to say it was not a quiet float.
Amongst the crowd was the crazy grandparents, both sets! Lucky them got to sit in the cold for hours waiting for us to pass by for about 2 seconds. They managed to snap some pictures of us as we whizzed on by. We made it down the first half of second street at a comfortable walking pace, but once we turned the corner, for some reason our driver decided to pick up the pace and we were distancing our float from the walking parents behind us, including Paul and Allison. They managed to catch up and Paul sent Allison up on the float to sit with me, then he hopped on and dragged the wagon behind the float. We flew through the second half of the parade. It was comical for us sitting on the float, but I felt bad for the parents who were running to keep up with us.
Overall we had a fabulous time. After the parade the 4 of us got ice cream and all the grandparents came back to our house. We played and put the kids to bed and we all chatted and laughed for hours until it was after midnight. I will definately be at the parade next year, as long as I am in a float and not one of the many people freezing on the street :)
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