Festival of Trees Parade

Today the boys, my mom, and I went to the Festival of Trees parade for the first time. I had never been to this parade, but had seen it on TV last year. We made sure to get there early (about a half hour before the parade was scheduled to start) so that we would be able to find a spot. Even then, we had some trouble - but we were able to find a place between some lawnchairs. I hope the people around us weren't angry - nobody said anything at least.

We parked ourselves on the curb and began the agonizing process of waiting. Yeah, a whole 20 minutes. You would have thought it was 20 hours.



To entertain themselves, the boys did some jumping.



Mom did her best to entertain them...



Nile found a stick on the street. Oh, and he found some broken glass too...


And more waiting...


Finally, the parade started! A few favorites: the John Deere balloon, the Curious George balloon, the skating Santa balloon, and the John Deere tractors set up like reindeer pulling a sleigh. The front one even had a red light for a nose!





Afterwards, Nate said his favorite part was the fire trucks and the bands. Here he is seeing a band coming down the street. ;)

Nile said his favorite was the balloons, although I can't say that during the parade any one thing was more exciting to him than another. He was actually pretty quiet. Although every time a group of uniformed servicemen went by, he pointed them out to me.

ColorSplash

I downloaded a new program for the iPhone that lets you selectively remove (or add) color into a photo. It really makes average photos look great, I can't wait to use it on a good photo!

Three boys, one tractor

Is this heaven? No, but it's close!

(Tom is borrowing a tractor for the weekend to work on our non-existent yard. The boys are beside themselves with excitement.)

How to entertain two toddlers on a cold November morning.

There is no place that our two little boys love more than the John Deere Commons.

As a reward for the injustice of having to get flu shots on Saturday morning, we wanted to do something fun as a family. We had planned to go to the Festival of Trees parade, but Nate (and the cold) convinced us that we should go "see the tractors" instead.

Nate spends his time running from tractor to tractor, making sure that he gets to "drive" each one.

Nile is more interested in figuring out how to disassemble the displays.

After visiting the tractors, we went to lunch at Lagomarcino's. We've actually never eaten there as a family before. Nile ate nothing but chips and goldfish crackers...no matter how much we tried to convince him that grilled cheese is yummy. Nate ate his sandwich, and part of Nile's. Tom and Nile were in the car, having already paid, and I waited with Nate to let him finish eating. I guess he was enjoying the experience.

At one point, after Nate had to use the "restaurant potty," he came back and announced to the entire room that "that bathroom is really cold!" The man at the table next to us laughed, and then agreed. Leave it to Nate to start a bathroom conversation in a restaurant.

I'll apologize for the fuzzy pictures, my cell phone camera just doesn't have quite the same resolution as our regular camera.