Christmas Parade

1. Ana on Franklin Street waiting for the parade to start
2. Ana and the Caribou Coffee reindeer (or caribou?)
3. Stacy and Ana in front of Kidzu
4. Ana in a tutu that she got from her neighbor Kate

[Robin]
The Christmas season has officially started. We have tried to engage her by getting her to open the advent calendar with chocolate pieces behind doors each day. And this weekend Ana and I went to our area's Christmas parade. Ana was supposed to ride on the Kidzu Museum float with her cousins, but wanted nothing to do with it when we arrived at the float. So we walked down the street and took a seat in front of Kidzu and watched the parade from there with Stacy and Carmen. Ana was so cute when the Caribou character came by us. She went up and took his hand. She also was quite taken with the marching bands and a kids "rock" group that came by on a float.

We also went to a neighbor's yard sale and picked up a number of things for Ana. Their daughter is about four years older, so there were some great hand-me-downs including the pink tutu. As soon as she got up this morning she wanted to put it on. She is a really girlie-girl.

We went to a neighbor's tree/yard X-mas lighting tonight. We stood in the pitch dark street and did a countdown with about 30 of our neighbors and their kids. When the lights came on their whole yard and house were filled with snowman, blinking lights and reindeer. There was a round of applause for the festive look. They had a large blow-up snowglobe with snowman that rotated inside and this received oohs and aahs from the kids. Ana thought this was marvelous. She also went with Carmen to "pet" the reindeer. It was super cute seeing her reach her hand out to touch the lighted animal.