A Christmas-y Weekend

Last Friday night I went with Jackie and her family to see Mr. Grumpy's Toy Shoppe. The play was presented by the Academy for Academics and Arts which is where Troy attends school and he was in the play. Every student in the school has a role in the play. Troy is in fifth grade and all the fifth grade students played astronauts and did a singing and dancing number. 

I loved the little children especially - the boys played toy soldiers and the little girls were dollies and they were all so adorable. I guess the play could be considered a musical since there were songs in all of the acts. The most touching moment of the play was when all the special needs children came out dressed in costumes from Mother Goose Land. It was just precious.

The play was fabulous and all of the children did a fantastic job! I love that everyone in the school was included in the play. It was one of the best shows I have seen at Christmas and I really, really enjoyed it!

On Saturday morning, Jackie came over and we gathered up all manner of blanket, chair and Pippa and headed out to the Christmas Parade. The parade didn't receive much publicity this year, but I had looked it up late last month and made plans to attend. We arrived at our spot at around 11:40 and the parade was slated to start at noon. We sat there freezing our tails off and waiting for the excitement to begin. 

Pippa was pretty rambunctious at first (no surprise there) but settled down after the parade started. I don't know if she was scared of the loud noises or just freezing, but The Pip spent the rest of the parade in between mine and Jackie's chairs shivering. 

After sitting out in the cold for about an hour and a half, we moved our frozen bodies to the car and watched some of the parade from the car with the heater on. Pippa was in the backseat with the blankets shivering still. After the Huntsville High Band passed us, I decided to check out the list of parade participants and discovered there were no more bands coming through so we decided to leave. 

The parade was super disappointing this year, and I had really been looking forward to it because the theme was A Charlie Brown Christmas and that is one of my favorite Christmas specials. There were only two high school bands (Huntsville and Lee) and a couple of middle school bands and the rest were just people in cars driving by and waving. It was the worst it has been in a long time. Even the "Rev it Up!" lady wasn't there! I found out later that a lot of bands and other participants cancelled because it was cold. Weird, I know. 

Despite the disappointing turnout, we still had a good time waving at people and listening to the few bands that actually did show up. Here's to hoping next year's parade will be a lot better!