Happy New Year

It is now 2009 and I am settling in after spending time off watching the Rose Parade with my daughter. Ever since I grew up watching the Rose Parade in my native Massachusetts, I have loved this parade. Now that I live close enough to go to it each year,I have only missed once, last year due to a bad case of the flu. Not this year, I enjoyed every moment, and to share it with my younger daughter was great. Usually I have taken my older daughter because it was when my wife and I were looking at the floats post parade 22 years ago, she went into labor and on Jan.2 my daughter was born. For the first 10 years I would pack her and I up and my wife and younger daughter would stay home, we would trudge up to Pasadena, try to find a spot for a stroller and me to sit and watch and we would have a great time. The last 10 years we would go up the night before and spend the night at a church, watching the cars go by with shaving cream or marshmellows or silly string all on them, and then after welcoming the new year, we would catch a nap inside the Holiston UMC and then wake up early at 4 to start cooking breakfast for 400 plus people who would be coming at 6am. We would work until about 9am when the parade would make it to the church and then we would sit in curbside seats reserved for us workers, the paying customers were up in the grandstand behind us. Then after wards we would wait for traffic to die down and head off to home to sleep and watch the channel 5 repeat of the parade and get more information on the floats and bands and riders. This year the parade has been shortened, and it seems like the pace was much faster, it was over before I knew it. My older daughter had gone to another New Years event and did not come, my wife has been having difficulty walking due to a knee injury, so it was just my younger daughter,Susy and I. We went to the post parade float display and got to see up close the detail of each float. It is always so amazing to me how they do it. Yes the holidays are now over, but the beauty of the flowers, the artistic designs, the happiness I feel when spending time with my daughter and sharing with her the parade, these experiences will live with me for a long time to come. I thank God for being healthy this year, for the beautiful day for the parade and for the opportunity to see such a great event. I hope you will, if you have not already, go to the Rose Parade at least once, who knows maybe you will get hooked on the experience just like me!