The Bands Go Marching One-by-One

Saturday morning was the annual Neiman Marcus Christmas Parade here in Dallas, and to say that I was really really really super excited about going just doesn't seem to convey the real super excitedness that I had been feeling during the days leading up to Saturday. I guess that's what happens when you spend so much time at home with a toddler. During the week, you look forward to trips to the grocery store or the post office or storytime at Pottery Barn Kids, and when the weekend comes and you have plans to do something fun as a family...well, that's pretty much the best thing ever.

Of course, it didn't hurt that we had reserved seats in a prime location along the parade route. Some people at TK sponsor a section of bleachers every year and offer tickets to attorneys and their families. So for a small (well, medium) fee, we were able to show up right before the parade started instead of hours ahead of time, take our seats, drink hot chocolate, eat donuts, and hang out with TK folks and their families while we watched the parade.

The theme this year was Santa's Workshop, and there were zillions of people there, great music, amazing floats, marching bands, dancers, horses, and poop-scooping clowns. And, as expected, Alex was in a perpetual state of awe the entire time. He didn't seem to recognize the dozens of kids' show characters that passed by, so I guess that means he must not be watching that much TV (or at least that's what I like to tell myself). But he loved the giant balloons and danced when the bands came marching through and gushed when the pretty girls waved at him.

I was the only goober in the stands with her camera blazing the whole time, but so what, it was Alex's first parade, and a great one at that, and I didn't want to forget a second of it. It lasted over an hour, and when it was all said and done, I had snapped about 230 pictures. Although I've uploaded near that number in previous posts, I decided to post a handful of my favorites here and uploaded the rest to my Flickr site.

I have to admit, I choked up a couple of times as I watched Alex watch the parade. I mean, experiences like this just remind me why I wanted to have kids, to be able to do things as a family and share these fun moments with each other. And it reaffirmed the fact that Dallas is a great place for us to be at this stage in our lives, where opportunities like this abound, and we will be able to experience things as a family that we might not get to elsewhere. Sappy as all that sounds, it's true, and I'm not too macho to say it.