Christmas Parade

The ballpark in our community hosts an annual Christmas Parade as a way to raise money for families in need during this time of year. Everyone in the parade is supposed to bring a new toy or non-perishable food item to donate. Our church's float in the Christmas parade had a "Happy Birthday Baby Jesus" theme.

I am so thankful for my faithful friends like Melanie and Linda who were willing to help blow up over 100 balloons for our float. Thankfully, we did have an air compressor.


I love the 6 ft tall inflatable birthday cake we found from Oriental Trading.

We had music blaring from the kids Christmas Musical that they sang along with throughout the parade route.

Here are some of my crazy - uh, I mean, BRAVE friends that were willing to ride along on the float with the forty kids and youth!
I used this group of sweet little girls to keep me warm during the parade. I kept offering for them to sit on my lap ~ my motives were mostly selfish because they were like my very own heated blankets!

Micah had a fist full of lollipops ready to throw before we even got rolling.
Brian sampled the treats!

Savanna and Kayleigh snuggled up trying to stay warm in the FREEZING cold. We live in Florida for a reason ~ we do not like weather THIS cold! Brrrr!!!

Don't you love their Happy Birthday Baby Jesus hats?

Amy found a couple of "heated blankets" for herself!

Check out the Christmas Elvis.

CRACK ME UP!

Many of our church kids were also invited to ride on other floats for the school, scouts, or ball park. There were even a few on horseback.

I had to grab a pic of some of my favorite kiddos from Cub Scout pack 430.
I love the way they saluted me when I took the picture.

Charity and Melissa ready to roll on the ball park float.

I love this group of softball girls!

While we were actually riding along in the parade, I whipped out my camera just in time to catch this guy on the side of the road. How smart is he to think about catching all the candy and goodies with his umbrella!?! Brilliant!!!

We had a great time at the parade, but we live in a small town so this was definitely a small scale, country parade. But at the end of the parade, Micah cracked me up when he turned to me and said "This parade was PERFECTION!" I think he thought he was in the Macy's day parade!

Life through the eyes of a child!

The parade route ended at the ballpark with a bake sale, BBQ plate sale, and a visit from SANTA! What a WONDERFUL way to raise money for those in need while celebrating the birth of Christ with our community.