Christmas Parade

I had never been to a Christmas parade until we moved to Helena. It was about 30 minutes long, local businesses, girls scouts and boys scouts had floats, churches and some schools, if I remember correctly. The first time we went, Ella was in her stroller and someone from a church gave her a penguin...we know her as "Penguino"...Ella still sleeps with her. There was also some strange custom that I was unaware of, they throw candy at you. Some of the little ones in the parade really pelt you with the candy. Anyway, Emily thought that was great and so did Ella when she was a bit older. I thought that that was just an oddity in Helena. Then we went to a Christmas parade in Springville, Alabama with some of our other friends and they did it there as well. So I had decided it was an Alabama thing. I was wrong. We went to the Dallas Christmas parade and apparently this is done in Georgia as well. The parade was fantastically fun for the girls, even if Ella was begging to leave after 45 minutes because she was frozen...it was only 41F!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (grey and damp too!). We stayed for the whole 1.5 hour parade. We were at the beginning of the route so we had a TON of candy thrown our way. Emily and Ella only picked up about half, they didn't want the gum or hard candy since they know I won't let them have it. A stuffed puppy was thrown to Emily. This little boy was on a float and I swear he did a double take and then started tapping, hitting almost, the adult with them saying "can I throw the puppy? I want to throw the puppy! Can I throw the puppy to HER? I am throwing HER the puppy"...it was very funny! Ella got a green teddy bear thrown to her about 20 minutes later. I promise you, this is almost more candy than they got at Halloween! Look what they did manage to stuff into Mommy and Daddy's pockets... (There is a green bear behind Ella's head)