I know it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet and I should probably keep my holiday shenanigans to myself (at least for another week), but I couldn’t help myself! Not to mention the family posts have been few and far between for the last several weeks (thank you moving and unpacking), so I thought it was time to pop in with something a little more family-centric. For the second year in a row, Ella’s dance team was invited to perform in a parade at our local outdoor shopping center to usher in the holiday season. They have a huge lighting ceremony right before Thanksgiving, along with a parade, faux snow, and fireworks.
She has had plenty of extra practices the last several weeks and was finally ready to show off all of her hard work this past weekend. It made for a crazy Friday afternoon, since the mall is halfway between my home and office. She had to be there, dressed and ready, at 4 o’clock and traffic is awful this time of year. Thanks to Gran, we were able to get everyone right where they were supposed to be, just in time for the parade.
Ella’s competition team was joining the other competition teams from our studio and dancing together for the parade. Although I have permission from the moms of girls on our team, I was hesitant to share photos of the other girls without knowing how they would feel. This mom blog stuff is not for the faint of heart! You’ll notice a few blurred faces from time to time in this post.
Once I got Ella safely “backstage” for practice, I met up with Josh, Sophie and my parents to wait for the big show. We were smart enough to bring camp chairs this year and were much more comfortable than the last time we waited. Because we were so early, we had plenty of people stop by to ask what we were waiting for. It was pretty comical, I’m sure, to see us sitting on the sidewalk at the mall! The good news is, we had perfect seats to watch our girl and to see Santa!
While we were waiting, Josh spent some extra dollars at the shave store because he’s as obsessed with facial products as I am. Sophie waited in line (twice, thanks to a busted balloon) for a fun balloon animal, which turned out not to be an animal at all!
After a long wait, we saw our girls coming around the bend, led by some of our favorite moms in the CUTEST golf cart of all time. The girls looked great and we had so much fun cheering them on. Don’t adjust your volume — I muted the beginning of the video because all of the moms were yelling at their girls and it got a bit overwhelming! Ella is on the right, on the second row — you can spot her between the two older dancers on the front!
After we picked Ella up, we walked over to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner, where both girls fell asleep sitting up. Who knew that Christmas parades were so exhausting?!
