City of the North Parade

Each year in our city a holiday parade takes place the Friday before Thanksgiving. It is a lengthy parade with many floats, marching bands and a lot of dance teams. I am not sure why the mostly Christmas parade happens the Friday before Thanksgiving, but who am I to have questions? This parade tradition is a big deal, and it is even televised on the local TV station. There is always a crowd regardless of try unpredictable weather. In other words, no matter what the weather: snowstorm, sunshine, or extreme cold, there is a crowd.

Now that we have high schoolers, we have participants in the marching band. The weather was fairly nice this year, so The Banana and I took Mr. TOF, resident marching band fan to watch. We arrived late because The Banana was finishing up swim team practice, but we did not miss YaYa in the band.

That was good, since Mr. TOF had been anticipating seeing the marching band all afternoon. In fact, he was accurately banging out the drum cadence from the percussion section on every surface that could make noise all afternoon.

We ended up watching in a desolate, dark stretch of the parade route since we were late arrivals. It was nice to be a bit away from the crowd, but unfortunately since everyone had just done their important routine for the TV cameras right before they got to us, and not many people were next to us, most parade entries seemed to just pass by us quickly, their eyes set on upcoming intersections in the parade route.

We decided that next year when we go see The Devious Snail (freshman don’t march at our high school) we might become band superfans and just follow the marching band down the route so we can enjoy that lovely cadence longer.

Since it’s hard to play oboe while marching, and since she doesn’t love playing saxophone which she sometimes plays during pep band, YaYa is part of the flag team this year.