Thursday: parade

Today was the big day!  The weather had been looking cold and rainy earlier in the week, but it was getting slightly warmer and less rainy as the week went on.  By this morning it was 62deg and 40% rain.  However, two hours later it was 61deg and 100% rain for the whole time.  Needless to say, it changed several of my plans.

My plan ended up working quite well.  I picked up Isaac and we quickly ate lunch at home.  I dropped Isaac off at Hope College, putting him in my office, while I parked the car closer to the end of the parade.  The parade isn't really all that long, about 1.5 miles, but I expected Isaac would be rather tired at the end and didn't want to make him walk a loop.  

The rain was drizzly at this point and it continued this way through the rest of the afternoon.  However, it wasn't windy so my umbrella worked well.

I dropped Isaac off and he exchanged the umbrella for a poncho.  I then walked down the parade route a bit and found a place to sit.  It was rather nice to be by myself.  It made it easy to navigate and I didn't need to watch kids and make sure they weren't bored or wet.  I saw a ton of people that I knew, although I didn't say hi to all of them since some were far away.  (I also saw one friend three times!  One while they were heading to street scrubbing, one during scrubbing, and one while they were coming back.)  If I get to do it this way again next year I might consider doing the street sweeping.  (Joshua had a full day of school since I didn't take him out for the parade.  They watched a movie and I think it was the best choice for everyone.)

Isaac is the bass drum on the inside...so two people in from the edge.

After they went by my spot I got to walk the rest of the parade on the sidewalk with them.  Usually this went fine, but there was one place that I went in front instead of behind and ended up walking in front of a few people.  It wasn't obvious were I was supposed to go though!  Luckily, a lot of it was empty chairs.

Afterwards we went back to the ice cream sandwich wagon from yesterday and both got ice cream.  Isaac was pretty cold by this point...the poncho kept him warm enough during the parade, but he had wet hair (from before putting his hood up) and cooled down quickly.  We decided to eat near my office which luckily had a blanket.