Christmas Parade

Today has been crazy! Duffer was at work all day and my plans were to get the house cleaned and laundry done before we went to the Christmas parade downtown. Then tonight we could finish all the Christmas deocorating. Well...it didn't quite happen that way. While I was cleaning, I started looking for the broom. It turned out that the broom was in Rylee's room which the kids had managed to lock and then walk out...and they did this to their room too. I just about lost it because they had been doing everything that weren't supposed to do all morning and now I had to figure out how to get in their rooms with them being locked. I called my dad...who luckily is a locksmith on the side...and he tried to talk me through unlocking them. I have always been able to unlock these type of doors in the past, but these suckers wouldn't budge. So my dad ended up having to come over and unlock them for me...on the flip side it actually got him to come and see my house for the first time! ;)

Anyway, this door incident got us behind and I was supposed to meet Cindy downtown at 2pm. I think I got in the shower around 1pm so we were flying to get ready. I go down to start loading us in the car and Rylee has taken off her pants and is getting undressed and Davis never put his contacts in! It is a wonder that I don't have high blood pressure! Needless to say I was about 10 minutes late...but we go find some seats and enjoy the parade in what I didn't think was a very pleasant day. It wasn't warm and it was rather windy.

As we get back to our cars, Rylee insists that she is going with Bella. She literally threw a fit when I had to put her in her car seat...you know when they arch their back and you absolutely cannot get the seat buckled! After 5 minutes I finally got her in by telling her we would go to Bella's house but 1/2 mile down the road she passed out!

My next task...our pre-lit tree that we put up last night has about 50 bulbs burned out so we will be replacing bulbs all night. This same thing happened to us last year so surely next year we will be good to go because I am certain by the time we get done all the bulbs will be fairly new ones!

Here are some pictures I took while at the Christmas parade downtown...

Jett and Bella...Cindy was smart and bundled her kids up and here I thought it was supposed to be 58 degrees so they didn't need jackets. I happened to have Rylee's and my jacket in the car and of course the boys didn't want to wear one anyway.

The girls...Rylee and Bella who are best known as the twins...and then Keagan. We have now had 3 people at different times ask if the girls were twins. One time was a one of the DB games and Cindy was taking them to the concession stand...the police officers that worked that night said as Cindy walked by..."She sure has her hands full with twins and another on the way!" Cindy got a little irritated about being talked about as she walked by but then we laughed about people thinking they were twins AGAIN!

Here are all the kiddos...Davis, Jett, Rylee, Bella and Keagan...they all had a blast and came home with WAY too much candy.

Davis took this picture of Cindy and me...he actually got carried away and took about 6 before he realized it!

Rylee was chilled out in Keagan's chair watch the parade go by.

I took a picture of Jett and me...isn't it funny how he scrunches his face when he says CHEESE!?!?

Davis was sad that Tucker was at his dad's and couldn't go with us. :(

Cindy and I both wanted to try out this because we thought it sounded so cool. We got brochures so that will probably be our next venture.

Here is Ian and Cade on the Theatre Guild float. They...including Macey...are all in the Best Christmas Pageant ever this year. I couldn't get a picture of Macey because she was on the other side of the float. We tried to meet up with the Allen's to sit with them also but they were on the other end where the parade ended and we were at the beginning. :(

And finally Santa arrived! We skipped the Santa Train event where they throw candy and donated gifts because I did that last year for the first time ever and it was scary. I ended up hovering over Rylee in her stroller to protect her from the hard books, candy and other stuff they were throwing out!