Pink...Like the color: One of Our Favorite Holiday Traditions

Every year, our city has a big Christmas parade the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I love parades and this one is one of my favs. It's one of the largest night time parades in the Midwest. I thought I would share some pics and thoughts from this year's (almost a month late).

Here's a picture of Brian and the girls waiting for the parade to start. The parade goes right through our downtown. We don't live that far from there, so we eat dinner quick and head down. The sidewalks are always packed. In fact, people are putting their chairs out early that morning already.

The parade begins with the Santa Scamp. Basically, it's a bunch of people running down the street - sort of like a really mini marathon. Shortly there-after, the parade starts. There are floats and tons of high school bands. It's great.

This year, we were lucky in that it wasn't too terribly cold. Don't get me wrong, we had to dress very warm, but it was not too bad to sit outside for about an hour. Last year it was raining, so this year was a definite improvement.

This is my favorite part of the parade. It's a bunch of the baskets from hot air balloons on a trailer. They travel down the street and shoot of their flames. As they come down, they turn off the street lights so that this can just really light things up. Everyone gives their cheers of delight when these go by. You can just feel the intense heat.

Finally, the parade concludes with Santa as one would probably expect of a Christmas parade. The kids get super excited as he comes down the street. My pictures aren't the best, but it's hard when you have on gloves and it's dark out.