We got in the holiday spirit by starting off our weekend attending the Dallas Christmas Children's Parade Saturday morning. What a fun event! A good analogy to this parade would be to scale down the Macy's Thanksgiving parade quite a bit but with the same elements. Dallas' parade was filled with dozens of marching bands, inflatable balloons, floats, clowns, etc., just on a teeny bit smaller scale compared to the larger parades that are on TV.
The Dallas parade is a huge community event that draws about 400,000 people downtown each year. We purchased bleacher seats in advance so that we wouldn't have to arrive before dawn to secure seats on the curb. And while we prempted the seating issue in advance, what we could not predict, nor prepare for, was the COLD morning we had in Dallas today. The internet weather sources said that the temperature when we left the house was about 28 degrees, and with the wind chill I would guess that the temperature never got above the 40 degree mark all morning. We bundled up with layers beneath our heaviest coats and hats and mittens for everyone, though it was still chilly for all of us. Luckily, our seats were in the sun so that helped a bit.
We rode the DART train downtown, (public transportation) which pleased the children immensely as they thought this was much fun. Once we got to the downtown stop, we walked several blocks until we found our parade seats. Downtown is decorated for Christmas!
We only waited about 15 minutes in the bleachers before the parade started, and during this time we all had the chance to warm up in the sun a bit.
Below are a few shots of our favorite parts of the parade. This elf balloon was one of our favorites!
These white horses are beautiful!
John and Scott look great in this photo!
And check out Amelia on the DART train on the ride home! Is she posing for the camera, or what?!? That's a santa sticker on her cheek.
Oh, and I forgot to mention thus far an essential ingredient to making our day in the cold as smooth as possible - the incessant bribing of our children with sweet treats. We encouraged 
them to "keep warm" with doughnuts before the parade, and John weaseled his dad into buying him cotton candy after the parade. The photos tell it all. I obviously have nothing against feeding our chidlren incredible amounts of sugar, so long as it works well for our plans that day. Ha ha.
them to "keep warm" with doughnuts before the parade, and John weaseled his dad into buying him cotton candy after the parade. The photos tell it all. I obviously have nothing against feeding our chidlren incredible amounts of sugar, so long as it works well for our plans that day. Ha ha.
Once we were home, the rest of the day was focused on decorating the house for Christmas. We put up all the decorations inside. And then tonight, after the kids had dinner and weere ready for bed, we decorated the tree with our ornaments. I really like our Christmas tree. Besides the beautiful ornaments that my mom has sewed for us, the rest are largely ornament projects from the kids' preschool classes, which are adorable in their own right. Add to that the ornaments my mom saved from my youthful days, and we have a nice, casual, perasonalized Christmas tree. 
Every year I try to get a nice photo of the children posing nicely in front of the tree, and wouldn't you know that (as is typical) Amelia posed beautifully and John refused to cooperate. This is the best of the best. But the kids had fun decorating, which is really all that matters.
This was a good first day of the Christmas season for us - can't wait to feel the spirit more as the month goes on!
wendy, i love that you decorate the tree with an assortment of ornaments from LIFE, not just fancy color coordinated "do not touch" ornaments! brings back many memories from childhood as our tree was the same and i plan on doing this for my family one day as well!
ReplyDelete