dunelight

The denizens of Whoville are waiting to roll. You can’t see it but the girls are made up and have a lot of candy to throw at children on the parade route. The trees on this float were amazing. They looked like a set from Children’s Theater. You can see the Grinch of this float behind the boy’s reindeer antlers.

Everyone gets involved in the parade and methods of transportation vary from Jeep to horse to float to wheelchair.

The kid on the right just caught sight of Jack Skellington, of Nightmare Before Christmas fame, riding on the Christmas Town float. I think that is his sister in the Lifesavers candy colored jacket, she too was really excited about Jack and had been rushing around the float waiting for the parade to start.

Here’s Jack, the object of their awe and excitement:

The character, Jack, was a Halloween Skeleton but he LOVED Christmas. This might have been my favorite float.

Today is Wednesday, it’s ‘Buy One, Get One’ day at Bigby’s Coffee, a Michigan institution (Take that, Starbucks!). Christmas season can be difficult, we often feel tremendous pressure to have the ‘perfect’ holiday for family and friends. Do something that brings you joy, even if it is nothing to do with Christmas, whatever you need to reset your equilibrium and bring you peace. For some people it is spending outlandish money to build a float, buy a costume, grab some friends and ride a float in the freezing rain to bring joy and awe to others. If you do this you don’t have time to bake cookies or clean the house but that’s not important. You CAN’T do it all, Hallmark is lying to you.

For me that reset button is dragging my husband to Bigby’s and buying a huge, usually Holiday themed (Pumpkin Spice for Halloween/Thanksgiving, Snowberry/whatever for Christmas), festive, well caffeinated coffee drink. It’s BOGO Wednesday! AKA Heavily caffeinated Wednesday!!

Then one of us spills our coffee drink in the car and the other rushes to clean it up. Human’s thrive on ritual and tradition. It’s what we do.

How does the song go, Rainy Days and Mondays? This young family had a great curbside seat and was waiting for the parade to begin.

You usually see these utility trailers hauling everything from snowmobiles to junk cars. I prefer this load of 6-7 year old Cub Scouts patiently waiting for their part in the parade to begin.

The parade had several Mr. Grinches, this was the ‘furriest’. He was more popular than Santa!

These girls were happy and eager to get the parade started while one of the moms gave last minute instruction.