Christmas Parade 2008

I have been going to the Christmas Parade in downtown Dallas since 2003. I was excited for it to come this year since I had my own little baby to take.
Our very good friends The Newlands came from Tyler and stayed Friday night with us so we could all wake up early Saturday morning and go downtown. I was so excited for them to come. We used to hang out about once during the weekend before they moved in September. We have really missed them. Saturday morning came too early for us all because we stayed up till about 1 a.m. talking and catching up. Not to mention they had a fussy baby that night so I think they got less sleep then anyone. Finally we were ready to go at 7:30. We had originally planned to be downtown for a prime spot at 7 a.m. but oh well I had gotten there later in years past and still found a spot to sit. Once we got downtown I found a parking lot that didn't have many cars and thought this is great. I pulled in the drive and waited on the attendant and he said, "$20.00." OMG are you kidding me!!! I have never paid that much to park for this event. No wonder there weren't any cars in this parking lot. So I decided I should just park here because it is very convenient and I didn't want to have to try to find another parking lot to find out that it would have been the same amount. We got all the kids out and the chairs and headed toward the parade route. We had a great idea. We were going to stand on the corner and wait till they blocked the street off and go in the middle of the road. Little did we know that is what everyone else was going to do too. So here we are with a 6 month old, a 11 month old and a 2 1/2 year old waiting with our chairs on the street corner for the police to block the road trying to hold our ground with a million other people. We ended up having a decent seat. Did I mention that it was 35 degrees that morning. So finally we could sit and wait. I had a blanket so I put Rileigh in my lap and B had Jude strapped to her and we were pretty warm. We were right next to a Mickey D's so we ate breakfast and waited for the parade to start. We will be going again next year but I am thinking we will buy reserved seats so we can show up right before the the parade and not have to sit outside in the cold for an hour and a half. Here are the pictures from the parade.