Lite em up!
It's time for those night-time Parade of Lights again, and after taking a few year hiatus from them we decided to join in the fray again this year. Fortunately it wasn't horribly cold, but as is typical the day Dave was set to build the framework for the float was notably cold and snowy. Ah well. He and Parker put together the frame inside the horse barn so it wasn't terribly uncomfortable.
That is, until Saturday when we went to decorate it, and found out that the nifty plan to lower the frame in order to get it out of the barn... somehow wasn't going to quite work. Boo. So that took us a lot of wrestling, just in time modifications, and no little bit of swearing to get it outside. But once done, with the help of some of our parents we put together a pretty nice float in very little time. (The key I have to remind myself is that for a night-time parade, how the float looks in the daylight matters relatively little. Whew!)
The second key I have to remember for next year is that delicate things like crate paper can't survive even the 4 mile drive to the parade. LOL. Next time we'll do more decorating down at the starting line!
Meanwhile Ginger and some of her riders were getting Romeo and Shadow ready to go downtown to do pony rides before the parade. They aparently were very popular! The float wasn't ready yet so they went and we followed later.
Thankfully, like I said, it wasn't horribly cold and in the end we didn't have much time to sit and wait for the parade to start. Never the less, it's good that this parade is only about 5 blocks long (as opposed to the summer parade which went on for miles it seemed!!). There are restrictions on being able to throw candy from a float anymore -- anything you distribute you have to hand to people. So we decided to hand out gift certificates to everyone who said they had dogs. Seems like we talked to dozens of folks -- so hopefully this made for a good marketing opportunity.
The horses were following the float, and decided that taking bites out of the hay bales ringing the trailer was a fun and entertaining thing to do. It made the crowd laugh too - so we let them keep doing that. But when one of them pulled the hay bale clear off the trailer that really wasn't nearly so amusing. To us. Both Ginger and I had things in our hands. I can lift a bale one handed -- but I certainly can't chase down a moving trailer with it! So Ginger had to come take a hand and we finally manged to catch up to throw it back on. *headsmack*
Unfortunately we had a schedule crunch getting out of there because Dave and I had previously bought concert tickets down in Denver that evening. So we quick loaded up the horses and drove both truck/trailer sets home. We were pushing it, but in the end we got everyone home in a timely manner and we made the concert in good time (more on the show in the next post.)
That is, until Saturday when we went to decorate it, and found out that the nifty plan to lower the frame in order to get it out of the barn... somehow wasn't going to quite work. Boo. So that took us a lot of wrestling, just in time modifications, and no little bit of swearing to get it outside. But once done, with the help of some of our parents we put together a pretty nice float in very little time. (The key I have to remind myself is that for a night-time parade, how the float looks in the daylight matters relatively little. Whew!)
The second key I have to remember for next year is that delicate things like crate paper can't survive even the 4 mile drive to the parade. LOL. Next time we'll do more decorating down at the starting line!
Meanwhile Ginger and some of her riders were getting Romeo and Shadow ready to go downtown to do pony rides before the parade. They aparently were very popular! The float wasn't ready yet so they went and we followed later.
Thankfully, like I said, it wasn't horribly cold and in the end we didn't have much time to sit and wait for the parade to start. Never the less, it's good that this parade is only about 5 blocks long (as opposed to the summer parade which went on for miles it seemed!!). There are restrictions on being able to throw candy from a float anymore -- anything you distribute you have to hand to people. So we decided to hand out gift certificates to everyone who said they had dogs. Seems like we talked to dozens of folks -- so hopefully this made for a good marketing opportunity.
The horses were following the float, and decided that taking bites out of the hay bales ringing the trailer was a fun and entertaining thing to do. It made the crowd laugh too - so we let them keep doing that. But when one of them pulled the hay bale clear off the trailer that really wasn't nearly so amusing. To us. Both Ginger and I had things in our hands. I can lift a bale one handed -- but I certainly can't chase down a moving trailer with it! So Ginger had to come take a hand and we finally manged to catch up to throw it back on. *headsmack*
Unfortunately we had a schedule crunch getting out of there because Dave and I had previously bought concert tickets down in Denver that evening. So we quick loaded up the horses and drove both truck/trailer sets home. We were pushing it, but in the end we got everyone home in a timely manner and we made the concert in good time (more on the show in the next post.)
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posted by Monica |
2:44 PM
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