Parade Fun

I have many special memories of Christmas parades.  As a middle schooler I did my share of marching in freezing temperatures! In recent years we have been in the local parade with a float from our church.  Other years we have just been spectators.  Last year was the Great Parade Marathon when our church had a float in the Blacksburg parade. 

Alpheus reading the Bible story (recorded his voice on mp3) as the children gathered around the fireplace.

Our shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph

It was nearly all uphill and moved double the speed of a regular parade.  My job was to "walk" beside the float handing out candycanes.  (It is against the rules to throw candy from the float.)  I remained two floats behind during the whole parade because it was uphill and double time.  Did I mention that I kept getting hit by the candy being thrown from the float two spaces behind ours?  Despite all that, I was happy to be a representative of the real reason for Christmas!

This year we chose to be spectators again!  Bob and Debbie joined us down town for the fun!  After getting dinner at Pizza Inn, we parked closer to main street and staked out our place. 

Sarah, Bob, Debbie, Rose, Eva, and Hannah
Lydia and Mary

Now Daddy is the picture too! :)

*Alpheus and I both opted to keep our gloves on and let our enthusiastic apprentice photographer, Hannah freeze her fingers, I mean, practice her skills!  
Remember you can click on the photo to see it enlarged.

For three of us, the bands are our favorite part!  There were three but only this one played a holiday tune.  Here is the Christiansburg High School Marching Band.  They sounded great!

Here was the Auburn band.  They stopped right infront of us and Mary enjoyed gazing at her favorite instrument, the trumpet.  (Shouts out to you, Uncle Ed.)  Lydia's favorite was right behind. She got so excited to see the quads being played so close to her.

There were plenty of cars, trucks, semi-s, tractors, and motorcycles dressed up for the occasion! 

We don't listen to this station, but the girls liked the costume.

We have to include the picture of some of our favorite people, the Due South BBQ restaurant.  We play there once a month and just love the staff and regular customers!  I think the red nose is a tribute to Rudolph.  It is usually pink.

We all thought this was pretty clever.  The girls laughed and shrieked over the antlered motorcycles.  This was a motorized Santa too. 

Of course we were really hoping for some floats that showed the real reason for Christmas!  This first one wasn't a float exactly but it did get the point across! :)

Here was our favorite Christian float.  It recieved great cheers from the whole crowd as it passed by!

Here was another good one, but we missed getting the best view of it! So thankful for the Christian witness!

Close to the end of the parade it was getting backed up and it just so happened that the horse section stopped infront of us for several minutes.  Long enough for us to have a conversation with the owner of the rescue farm for horses and for some of the riders to show a few tricks.  We were just enthralled by looking at them especially all decked out for the parade!  Mary could only have been happier if she had been riding on one in the parade! ;)

Hannah noticed the fancy footwear on this one!

This pair was by far the most impressive horses in the parade.  They were huge!  We were just amazed at how big and pretty they were and we loved the wagon they pulled behind them!

After these were dozens of fire and rescue vehicles. The girls loved waving at the families inside!  We all had a great time. 

With All My Heart~