Plano Christmas Parade

Kathy and Tony took the girls to the Plano Christmas Parade for the first time last year.  The parade has been going on for years…Tony used to walk in it as a kid.  Tony’s parent's house it SUPER close to the parade route.  So we parked at their house, walked down their alley where we had front row seats.

Headed to the parade route

           

All set up waiting for the parade to make it’s way to us!

I’m not going to post pictures of the entire parade, but thought I would add some of our favorites.

               

Santa marked the end of the parade so we loaded up our stuff and headed back to the house.

The kids really enjoyed the parade AND of course the candy!! 

I have to add in a amusing {to us at the parade anyway} little side story.  About half way through the parade a lady in the parade stepped into a uncovered manhole of some sort and hurt her ankle {this is not the funny part}.  She was okay, but was very concerned that some one else would fall into it since it was right in the middle of the parade route. Another person in the parade decide to grab one of our chairs that we brought and used it to cover the hole {I was not yet aware of the “hole” fiasco at this point so I don’t have any pictures of our chair out in the middle of the street}.  It worked pretty well since it was very obvious and required people to go around it.  Someone alerted the Plano Police about the hole {this is where is started to become comical}.  Not wanting anyone else to get hurt, the put a traffic cone over the hole.

This worked okay for a while until one of the Mom’s marching in the parade tripped over the cone.  Not knowing that it was covering a hole she threw the cone out of the street.  We were shouting at her that it was covering a hole right when the band behind her starting marching across the hole.  THANKFULLY, no one fell in.  I am not sure how, but they didn’t.  Realizing what she did the same Mom decides to put the cone back on but she puts it on upside down INTO THE HOLE.  As she passed us she shouted that it was a smarter way to mark the hole.  I am not too sure how marking a hole with another hole is smarter, but we let that go.  Lance or Tony {I don’t remember now} ran out an turned the cone back up.

 Then the police came back out to take pictures {during the parade} of the hole.

They must have heard that the one cone wasn’t working so they decided to leave a Junior Office to watch the hole and warn others {so I assume since we couldn’t hear them}.

The officers must have thought that one cone and one junior officer still wasn’t enough so they came back and added two more cones for good measure.

Even with three cones and a junior officer it still took a Mom from the parade to help steer the kids around the hole safely.  Thankfully, so one else fell in the hole!