And the Christmas Parade Was...

...a bit disappointing.  After a wonderful dinner of rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and salad, we headed downtown for the parade which started at 5:30pm.  The kids were excited and engaged for the 1st half hour.  There were people handing out free hot chocolate and popcorn while we waited for the parade to start.  There were many cute characters, like Rudolf and a giant Gingerbread Man, going around greeting kids.  The parade started off wonderfully with police cars, fire trucks, and the Bartlesville High School marching band.  The kids were excited to collect candy.  However, after that, whoever was pacing the parade failed miserably.  There were large gaps between the parade events.  The kids eventually got bored and started behaving badly- along with many of the other kids standing near us.  The coolest thing we did see was a girl twirling pizza dough above her head as she marched along the parade route with The Pizza Place van.  Very cool!!!  The unicyclists were also neat, but we almost missed then keeping the kids in line (meaning keeping them from running into the road to collect candy and get run over by parade vehicles...oy!).  We finally left at 7:00pm without the end of the parade in sight- meaning no glimpse of Santa.  Oh well...


Kids are currently in the bath.  Then we will read a Christmas book and send the kids to bed.  Then Derek and I need to decide what tasty beverage we will cap the night off with during a show or movie.  Hmmmm....

...

Now that the kids are in bed I made the mistake of looking at the latest news.  All of those little kids killed were just as old as my Zach.   Total tears and kleenex right now.  Why would anyone want to hurt kids like my Z?  (I think I'll go get that glass of wine now...)