Washington's Birthday Parade

My family and I are officially Laredoeans... Laredites... whatever!  We attended the biggest celebration of the Washington Birthday celebration... THE PARADE!

*cue epic music*

I knew there was going to be a parade at some point, but I didn't officially hear about it until the week of.  I love parades.  One of my favorite things to do on Thanksgiving is to watch the Macy's Day Parade, and, actually, when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Orlando during the Christmas season, we got to help with a float in the Macy's parade they had at Universal Studios.  Yeah, I didn't know they did that at Universal, either, but here's the proof:

See?  Told ya I wasn't lying.

Really, though, I'd never been to a parade in person bigger than my old high school's Homecoming parade, so I was pretty excited about going to this one.

The kids and I (Poor Andrew had to work) rode with some friends of ours.  I drove and parked on the side of interstate.  On the little grassy spot between the exit ramp and the interstate.  It was SO crowded.  Crowds make me nervous.  I was so worried about my kids getting out of my sight, but luckily, everything was fine.  After wandering up and down the street for awhile, we FINALLY found a place to sit down and got ready for the show.  Woot!  

Wanna see pictures?  OKAY!

At the beginning of the parade, the kids were really excited.  Can you tell?  :)  They didn't know what was in store.  This was their first BIG parade, too.

The floats were amazing!  Here were some of my favorites:

How long do you think they spent covering this entire truck with this?  And what did the truck look like after they took it off?  Yikes!

I'm thinking there must've been some sort of competition going on with these ladies.  There were a lot of them, and they all had goofy shoes.

Evan was REALLY excited to see the HEB float.  ha!

The best float EVER!  That dragon moved AND blew smoke!  So cool!

I want to be a Shriner just be on this awesome float and ride around in tiny cars.

There was also some awesome non-float stuff like...

These horses are HUGE!

Their outfits were awesome.

My kids didn't even know who this was.  For shame!

Don't be a dummy.

I KNEW he was alive! and Hispanic.  :)

This was too cute.

Elmo's ridin' dirrty.

One thing that's different about parades here vs. the one's I've been to is what is thrown.  We always got candy.  For some reason they throw beads here.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't get candy, but my kids really loved the beads.  Observe.

Evan was a little stingy with them... 

I really loved watching them get excited about floats and trying to get beads.  They were too cute.

We ended up leaving a little early because, my goodness, that thing is long, and kids can only handle so much--especially little ones who need naps.  I really enjoyed myself, though.  

Laredo, I gotta hand it to ya... you sure know how to throw a parade.  Can't wait to see what's in store next year!