Archive for September 26th, 2009
Oh, my girl loves a parade.
We woke up late and decided, kind of on the spur of the moment, that we would head down to the Neptune Festival to watch the parade since Ava enjoyed the ones as Disney so much. The problem with our plan was that we not only had to drive about 45 minutes but we also had to find parking at the oceanfront which easily took twice as long as the drive. The pain was compounded by the fact that we only had about an hour total to get us all presentable, loaded into the car, and drive/park/walk to a decent viewing spot on the parade route.
Probably needless to say that we failed miserably on all counts.
We got stuck in road traffic. We got stuck in parking traffic – waiting 20 minutes for entry into one parking lot only to have it close 3 cars ahead of us – and then having to gallop 19 blocks to the start of the parade route after finally finding a spot in the lot furthest away from ANYthing.
And then, of course, she had to potty so we had to hoof it even further in until we could get to a public toilet.
No matter. Once the potty situation was taken care of she climbed up on J’s shoulders to watch the last 4 minutes of the parade.
Bit of a strange parade, too. Or maybe it’s just they just stuck all the uncategorized groups at the end – like the two people who glued huge paper dove wings onto their Prius and walked beside it flashing the peace sign at everyone. Or the random Celtic cross in the back of a pickup. Or the JROTC group who had a mom walking beside them tossing in water bottles and blotting foreheads with a towel – necessary since it was about 12 degrees outside and they were walking ever so quickly at about 2 miles per hour for 20 or so blocks.
No matter. Ava still thought it was the coolest thing ever.
She happily waved at everyone who even slightly looked her way.
And then nearly took J’s head off when a real live fireman walked the crowd handing out safety coloring books. The kid was hell bent and determined she was getting one of those and attempted to dive off and crowd surf her way to get it. J finally shoved his way through and scored one for her.
But all of that paled when the marching band showed up.
She hooted. She hollered. She clapped. And I think we just may have a band nerd on our hands here. (Totally okay with that, by the way.)
Once the parade was done the immediate course of action was to buy me a sweatshirt (reference the 12 degree weather remark above). While that may be a slight exaggeration it was pretty darn chilly with the breeze off the water so I was forced to pay an obscene amount of money for a Neptune fest sweatshirt despite the fact that there was a perfectly good jacket in my car (reference the 19+ blocks away comment above).
The next course of action was food. Since we’d pre-planned not at all and had zero cash on hand we opted for a real restaurant – Waterman’s Surfside Grill which was a previous Best of the Beach Gold winner – where for some unknown reason I thought sitting outside would be a good idea. Yeah, sitting in the midst of a frigid sandblaster was fun. Or not. Especially since we were totally ignored by the wait staff for a solid 15 minutes while Ava screeched for “milk please, Mama.”
The food? J made the mistake of letting me taste his cheeseburger topped with crab meat. We swapped lunches soon thereafter and he happily ate whatever it was that I ordered. The burger was lovely. The fries were amazing. But they totally blew it on the kids meal by charging an unseemly amount of money for reheated Kraft mac-n-cheese and by having a completely inattentive staff – from the hostess (waited 10 minutes for her to show up to seat us initially) – as well as our waiter who was far more interested in the table of ladies who lunch who were also liberally sampling from the bar thereby upping his tip. Little did he know that I, since kid, am an amazing tipper when warranted. I pay by the pieces of food on the floor, you know.
Ava was a trooper. Even though she was nearly falling asleep in her lunch she held it together long enough to allow us to meander by the sand sculptures before crashing the very second her tush hit the car seat. This one was my favorite – note all the little sand stars scattered throughout.
And our own little star. Blessedly down for the count.
We thought.
After a suppressed giggle or two from the back seat I looked over my shoulder to see this:
(Thought you were done with Disney, right? Not so much.)
Remember the gazillion Disney stickers she swiped from the kindly one sticker-offering employee? Unbeknownst to me, J had tucked them into a pocket on her backpack. Which she could reach from her carseat.
And then she stuck them EVERYwhere!
You ever tried to pull stickers off somebody’s eyes without performing an inadvertent enucleation? And doing it while in a moving car whilst remaining seat belted in? Yes, I am that good.