The annual Santa parade

This is our 3rd year marching (well, walking and waving, actually) in Austin's Chuy's Children's Parade on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I used to take the kids when they were little so we already have lots of memories of this parade from the sidelines and we are making new ones as participants. Hehehehe...look what I found in my old boxes of photos! I don't know where our presents are - maybe we already handed them to a helper. That is Duncan's best bear "TJ." And look at Steffi's hair - it is as white as her dress!

Here they are another year with Kelsey and with foam antlers on (we had to buy a new set each year!).

3 times makes it an official tradition now, right? Whole Foods is one of the companies who signs up to provide an "entry" into the parade. Then some nice person asks who wants to participate and a bunch of us sign up and then some of us show up at the right time and place. Year 1 (2 years ago) it was hot, like 90 degrees and sunny during the parade. We wore just the tee shirts that were provided to us and I think we might have gotten a little sunburned. Check this out from that year... (yes! that is Elvis!)

The 2006 annual "hat" was a set of antlers.

Year 2 was the exact opposite. Well it wasn't exactly snowing, but it was a very, very cold and constant rain. We wore as many layers as possible. The parade started early and finished early, but miraculously people turned up to contribute gifts. It took us all day to warm up from that.

This year was pretty good - Steffi says it was perfect - a bit gray and cool, but luckily the rain held off until the drive home. And the crowds were great! You'll see in the photos below how much fun we had. We are also on TV!! We are on KEYE (http://www.keyetv.com/) in part 4 about 5:44 minutes into that clip. You can see Duncan carrying the banner and the carrot dancing in the background. Steffi and I are near Duncan behind the banner.

Mike is the carrot in these photos (there is a story about why he has a carrot suit, but we'll save that for another blog). Here he is with the corn.

There were large balloons that had to be carefully navigated around the traffic lights and trees.

Here's the Chuy's fish that had to be led around because he/she could not see out of the costume :)







The parade route started around 14th and Trinity. We walked down to 11th and then turned right and walked past the capitol and turned south down Congress Ave.

The green fruit is a pineapple. Must be a very unripe one.

Everyone wanted to high-five or hug the carrot!







Duncan and Steffi got turns carrying the banner. Duncan is carrying it on the TV shot on KEYE.







We got Santa hats this year which was good to keep our ears warm.







There was a fleet of pickups interspersed between the floats and periodically the parade would stop and we'd collect gifts in our shopping carts and then load them into the trucks.

Now we can't wait until next year. I think we're due for a warm, sunny day too!

PS- I added a link in my Thanksgiving blog to Steffi's blog about the UT game so you can see the great pictures she got. Here it is again.