4th of July Parade

Today was the Redmond Derby Day Parade. Our second time doing this. Belle loves it, as do we. Last year she was Supercat, this year she wanted to be Jack Skellington dressed as Santa. Gaga did most the leg work on the costume. I did her makeup and helped with our t-shirts.

Belle was a total hit with the crowd during the parade. We were in the "Happily Ever After" group since that was the closest category for her costume. So we were surrounded by princesses and dragons and all that sort of thing. And so you'd have this mass of pink and pretty and then BAM right there in the middle there's Jack Skellington! :) We had so many people get excited and yell "Hey Jack!" And one guy ran out of the crowd to stop us and take a picture with his cell phone.

And Belle of course is a total ham and knows how to work the crowd. Not only waving and yelling "hi" back to people but also telling them she was tossing them imaginary presents, and of course quoting the movie as she goes.

She was definitely a star. I swear it's like she was born for this sort of thing.

After the parade we lugged the bike and gear back to the car, changed clothing (well we adults did). On the way back to see the booths we stopped and watched the main parade some. There were characters from the Seattle Star Wars Society there who Belle enjoyed seeing, and Pirates. Star Wars and Pirates... don't get better then that! After that we looked around at the booths for awhile. Belle was really taken by the Akido demonstration! So we'll probably get her some classes soon.

We then went to lunch and then over to the carnival. Honestly these carnival things are pretty boring to me at best and scary at worse (those rides are death traps most of them). But Belle loves it and so I love it too. I really do love seeing her have such a good time. They had her favorite thing there which is the fun house. Now seriously this thing is so basic it is silly. But here again, Belle just loves it. She went through it 3 times. Twice with me and then the man running it let her go for free once herself to help her build her confidence. She did great.

We had a really great day. We got home and all us adults just want to lay down and rest but little miss energizer bunny just kept bouncing around the walls for the rest of the day. :)