The Jackson Five: Thanksgiving Day

It's rare that we'd be at home by ourselves for Thanksgiving, but we took advantage of it and decided to take the light rail train into uptown Charlotte for the Thanksgiving day parade. There's a train station about 10 minutes from us, and the light rail is pretty new to Charlotte. It's certainly not a city known for it's great public transportation, and this goes into the city and back--nothing fancy--but new for Em.

It happened to be freezing cold that day, too, so it really felt like holiday time!

I thought this was a sweet picture of Em snuggled up to Daddy on the train.

We live southeast of the city, so we really don't get there much unless we're going to a show or something--Em still really likes to see all of the tall buildings.

The parade started at 9:30, and we were there and ready!

I'm having some issues with my camera, so I went back and forth taking pictures on my camera and my phone.

Happy litle elf :).

The parade itself could use some tightening up--there were a lot of high school marching bands and a lot of people in convertibles, which were okay, but moved along pretty slowly and were not as exciting as some of the balloons and floats.

There were a lot of horses and dogs, which Em LOVED. This was the Wells Fargo stage coach.

Needless to say, the gingerbread man was a huge hit--this was Publix, which is slowly infiltrating Charlotte (SO EXCITED!)

The Charlotte Panthers were a big hit too--their band was the best, and most interactive. Sir Purr was on a four wheeler, which Em loved.

And one of the cheerleaders stopped and gave Em these blue beads...they have a new fan!

Even the drummers stopped and let the kids play--they were great.

It was really cold, and we were in the shade of the buildings, so we took a hot chocolate break.

Aside from the fact that Em still likes to be held sometimes, she's super warm, so Mick and I took turns holding her when it got really cold.

Toward the end, we got a little smarter and moved into the sun, which warmed us up a little.

The Charlotte Knights (minor league baseball team) is moving their stadium to uptown Charlotte in the spring, so there's a lot of excitement around that. Right now, the stadium is right across the SC line, which is really close to us. This snowglobe was a box with "Do Not Open Until April 2014."

The military tribute was nice.

I love that Em gets so excited over an American flag--there aren't many sights more beautiful!

Another balloon--we left a little before it ended because we were freezing and had been outside for almost 3 hours! It was a lot of fun though.

That evening, we had dinner with the Allards, who I've mentioned before. Em and Emma play so well together, and we really enjoy being with Heather and Jeff. Heather fixed a great kids table with these headbands for them to make and a table cloth to color!