Everyone loves a parade

Saturday night was our small town's Santa Claus Parade, a.k.a. One Of Liam's Favourite Nights of the Year. He seriously thinks that hanging out in his camping chair after dark in the cold is the most fun one can have. Mallory is more of a take-it-or-leave-it kind of girl. "I'm tired," she announced several times during the parade, and a few times we even caught her with her eyes closed; but the constant stream of candy canes being tossed her way was enough for her to see it through to the end.

The parade started at 7 p.m. and moving day must have gone really, really well, because everyone was feeling up to the event. (No thrown out backs or people collapsed in an exhausted heap on the couch!) Darin, Jennifer and Ethan even stuck around since they had missed the London parade a few weeks earlier. Here's Ethan lit up only by a streetlight... And a split second later... as a police car went by...I have a complaint to make about the parade itself. It was too long. The organizers were all giddy about the fact that there were almost 50% more entrants this year than last, and living in a small town, I am totally appreciative of the fact that we have a parade at all. But an awful lot of the entries this year were cars plastered with signs advertising something, and maybe a string of Christmas lights wound around the antenna if we were lucky. That's not the spirit of a parade. I am not expecting giant floats made entirely of roses, but such blatant advertising and little effort did not go unnoticed, and not in a good way. Last year's parade was just right at about 45 minutes long. This one was well over an hour and had too much filler for my taste.
Liam's skating club had an excellent entry - they constructed an actual skating rink on the back of a flatbed, complete with giant candy canes, snowflakes and lots of lights. They won a well-deserved prize for their efforts. We'd seen bits and pieces of the float coming together in our next-door-neighbours' garage for the past few months (she is the president of the club), but the final product was still a surprise and fun to see.Of course, the last float was the one we were all *really* waiting to see. Mallory waved up a storm to Santa - she was very excited to see him. I hope this means she doesn't dissolve into a puddle of tears when we take her to see him at the company Christmas party this weekend.