Parade Day

Friday night I finally decided to take pity on my eldest child and decided that if the kids were in good shape on Saturday, that we would go try and catch the parade together.

I planned my entire Saturday schedule around the idea that we were going to head down to that parade.

I came up with several game plans and scenarios just in case I was able to convince someone to go with us or in the event the babies deviated from their usual schedule.

Saturday morning came and the weather looked good, the kids were on schedule, and everything seemed okay.

I even tried inviting my sister to take her kids along to the parade with us, but I couldn't get in touch with her (eliminated that plan B from the possibilities!)

When I got the babies up from their nap, I discovered that Kian was running a bit of a fever.

That thermometer read "102.3" so I found myself digging out the tylenol, motrin and kiddie clariton.

Luckily, his fever started going down super quick. He was in a good mood, so I opted to give the parade a shot anyways.

Then I realized that I was almost out of diapers. My father was supposed to pick some up for us, but when I called to check, he had yet to get out for the day.

It was three in the afternoon and I was planning on leaving for the parade by four. Hmm....

I went ahead and made sure that the babies were dressed and ready, had their dinner picnic packed and the juice bottles all filled with extra to boot, and headed to the grocery store a few blocks away.

I managed to get in and out of the grocery store fairly quickly armed with an emergency pack of diapers and a new tube of butte paste. I was good to go!

I somehow got back home just in time to load the kids up on my original schedule and was pulling out of the driveway as the clock turned over to four.

We were on a roll! We arrived at the general area with time to spare.

My original plan had been to park in the casino parking garage, but I ran accross a lot on Lake street itself, so I went ahead and pulled in there.

I thought we were doing so well, since we had fifteen minutes to spare. It never occurred to me that the sidewalk going down the hill would not exactly be accessible to folks with strollers.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we were faced with a drop op and a huge curb to hop, all of which were on an incline.

The nearest ramp was a half block away down to our left. Luckily, a really super nice couple helped Bregon and I get the limo-stroller down that incline without an problem!

We ended up not being able to navigate our stroller throught the crowd at the corner by the museum, so we opted to park just on the other side of the reserved sign in front of the huge white tent.

This put us behind a police car with its lights flashing, which made Kian all sorts of excited.

I backed our limo up to the curb and out of the line of traffic and the time and put our brakes on to keep the stroller from rolling should the kids get too excited.

We were all okay, too, until the parade started. I handed out the babies picnic lunch to them a sliver of sandwich at a time, and this kept them distracted and pretty happy.

Once the parade started to roll, I made a deal with Bregon about how far he could go to get throws and showed him how to find us if he ended up leaving the area for whatever reason (which is easy to do in a parade as it rolls by.)

The babies did pretty well overall, too. Nobody really cried or was upset at the noises.

Vivienne learned to wave at the floats as they passed by. Kaiden decided that his stroller must be as big as a float, so when he was given his pair of beads, he thought that he should toss them at the people as they walked by him.

We were very lucky that most folks had thought that he had dropped his beads and they gave them back to him.

Then Kaiden got a bit too excited, and tossed his stuffed monkey that he had brought with him.

You would have thought that it was gold, the way the bigger kids swooped down on it.

All of my years of real New Orleans Mardi Gras experience kicked in at this point, and Super Mummie managed to beat the little hooligans to Kai's baby in time to prevent disaster.

Monkey then had to go and live in stroller net after that. I had started to put him in the basket underneath the babies, until I noticed this older kid trying to reach under the babies.

This was only the beginning, too. I really didn't try to catch anything on purpose. After all, my toddlers would only ever eat the beads anyways.

But poor Bregon had loads of trouble down in front where the crowd was.

I had warned him about wearing his special beads down there, but he wanted to have a place to wear them, so I had given in.

He had several pair that his GrandGary had brought him back from the Washington Mardi Gras.

He chose to wear the ones that lit up and played music down to the parade in spite of my warnings.

Sure enough, some very grown woman had thought that any and all beads were available to her and she actually had the audacity to try and remove them from around his neck.

He managed to run her off, but the whole incident really upset him. It was so bad with the adults, that when he finally did manage to catch something worth keeping, he ended up giving it to the very sad little boy standing next to him.

We did come home with a cup and a frisbee. The only beads we ended up with (other than what Bregon had worn down there) were the ones that a lady had given us before the parade had started and a set that this cute little man had given me who had been standing next to us.

After the parade, on the walk back to our van, Bregon noticed that lady who had tried to take the beads from around his neck and he started telling me the story about what had happened, not realizing (in typical child-manner) that everyone around us could hear him.

Some lady felt sorry for him and came over and tried to give us her beads for the babies.

I thanked her, but told her that they really didn't need any because they were really too young, but it was very sweet of her to offer.

Over all it was very pleasant, a few incidences withstanding. We didn't even have to worry about getting caught in parade traffic (which I am extremely afraid of.)

Unfortunately, we had to forgo the Highland parade on Sunday because both Bregon and Kian were too sick to go. Maybe next year!