Krewe of Centaur Parade

We did the Centaur parade last night. As we do each year, Steve and I walked down to the parade route from my house; it's maybe a mile. But it's MUCH easier than dealing with the blocked streets and crazy traffic after the parade in an attempt to get home. We parked ourselves at my friend Harriett's house and that was our base for the rest of the evening.

Harriett, as always, had tons of food. She had hot dogs, grilled sausages, hamburgers, a cabbage/Ramen noodle salad that was awesome, all kinds of sweets - cookies and cakes, chips and dips, just about anything you'd want. Somebody was always manning the grill.

I like to walk around a little and see who I know and I also like to look at all the crazy get-ups people wear. The little children are always cute and I saw one kid with a super cool balloon which was very festive. One party had a cool little train for the kids and this lady would load up and drive them all in a big circular route around the street, come back, drop them off and load up again. There was a huge turn out for the parade this year and I'll attribute that in part to the wonderful weather. It was warm in the afternoon but chilled off a little after dark but by parade's end we had a few sprinkles.

In this year's parade there were 32 floats and five bands. I actually didn't catch as much stuff this year as I usually do and there were a couple of reasons for that. One was because I spent part of the parade with a co-worker's one-year old who was parked safely back from the fray in her stroller. Ashley and Robert had a second child up near the floats so she could catch things and so I sat with the little one and we watched from a peaceful distance! She enjoyed the loud music and was cute. Also, when I stand next to Steve, he is so tall he catches everything so I don't stand a chance, but it's all good because he just gives them to me anyway! And finally, we are near the end of the route and some floats are either out of stuff by then or are slowing down. When it started to shower near the end, we packed up and started moving toward home, so we didn't actually work the last seven or eight floats for trinkets. No matter - I have BOXES AND BOXES in the garage of beads! It's just fun catching 'em!

Anyway, we had a big time. I was sending pictures back to my blog from my iPhone but the battery life on those things is "slack" as the Teenager says, and so between keeping tabs with him and taking and emailing photos, my battery got low well before parade end.

Today is the Krewe of Barkus and Meoux parade - creatures of all kinds - down on the riverfront. Then next weekend we have two big parades - the Gemini on Saturday and my favorite Highland parade on Sunday. I'll be exhausted!