Parade

Last night we decided to check out The Estes Park Christmas Light Parade. Luckily for us, it started at 5:30pm and since we had an early day after Thanksgiving feast, we decided there was no excuse not to give it a try. We bundled the boys in their snow gear, filled some thermoses full of warm drinks and ventured out into the snowy darkness. It started snowing pretty hard as we left the house so we thought for sure we'd be coming back home very soon.


The town was packed! Duh! I guess we didn't think that everyone else in town would think it was a great idea too. We meandered through the traffic, parked the car what seemed like miles away and started our roll (with the wagon) to Main Street.

The boys were ready and rarin' to go and we could hear the firetrucks announcing the start of the parade. And then the famous ESTES PARK WIND that everyone keeps warning us about kicked in. It was blowing snow sideways and pelting us in our faces. By that point we were pretty far from where we parked so we decided we needed to make our move. Stay vs. Go. We decided to abort the mission and head back to the car -----insert Debbie Downer whonk-whonk-waaaaaaaahh noise here----. Cooper was not happy about this decision at all. We made the mistake of talking up the parade before hand and might have mentioned something about a man in a red suit being the grand finale.

As we were heading back to the car (and Cooper was crying) we decided to hunker down under an awning and take cover to see if perhaps the wind would let up. We had our blankets and cover and the boys didn't seem to mind a bit. We figured we'd give it a few minutes and then Mark would run and get the car (if need be) while The Woman and Children stayed warm and dry.

Well, the man in the red suit must have played his cards right because low and behold the wind disappeared and the blowing ice/snow went away just like that. It was an early Christmas Miracle. Cooper got to see the big fat guy (Whooooo Hoooo!!! Or in this case, HoHoHoooooo!) and Cruz was all about the horsies.

In the end, it all worked out beautifully and fun was had by all. The (phone) pictures we took are horrible. It was dark, there were lots of floats followed by lots of oooohhhs and ahhhhs. I'm sure you get the idea........

He is having fun. I promise.

Sadly, we don't have any pictures of the man in the red suit. But I'm sure you have a visual. There was far too much excitement for a photo op at that point.