Rainy Day Parade

Flying back to Washington was a full day in itself, up at three o’clock Eastern Standard Time, flying six hours plus an hour drive back to our old home town and getting ready to go watch two of our grandchildren march in the Christmas parade, one plays a flute and the other is a drummer. Problem is we left seventy six beautiful sunny degrees to land at thirty seven degrees and raining. So after gathering lawn chairs, blankets, going to the store and purchasing hats and gloves which we forgot to pack and purchasing a very large umbrella, we felt ready to go tackle sitting in the freezing rain for the next two hours. We got to the parade route early to get our spot and fortunately for us we got a great spot under the cover of a storefront so we set up our chairs and held onto our space waiting for our kids to all arrive.

The parade was fun and festive in spite of the awful weather, one thing I can say about Washingtonians is they are hearty folk who do not let the cold rain dampen their moods. excuse the pun.

The parade was long and typical of a farming community with decorated tractors, farm equipment, lots of trucks and horses. The band was toward the end of the parade and we cheered hard as the marching band went by.

I’ll tell you what, those kids are hearty. We were ready to go as soon as the band passed. Its only been a couple of months since we left here but we are already very comfortable with the warmer weather and have zero desire to be back here in the cold. Again telling ourselves we definitely made the right decision. We really do love where we live. Now if we could just get our kids to move closer, it would sure make us happy. But they have to live their lives and we would never impose on their right to do that.

So our next two weeks are fully booked with Christmas Parties, dinners with friends, decorating our parents house, Christmas shopping, cookie baking, gift wrapping and spending time with family and friends. Time will pass quickly so we are trying to appreciate all the little moments.

It’s been three days since we arrived and we’ve been very busy and our week ahead is full, however I am ready to start spending time with our children and grandchildren. As of yet, we haven’t gotten to see them much, so we will definitely be making our time with them a priority the rest of our vacation. We have plans to drive through Spanaway lights, take the kids to the movies, bake cookies and maybe do a sleepover if all goes well. So in saying that we better get back to decking the halls of our parents house so we can be finished here so we will have that time we want to enjoy all those kiddos.