Holiday Parade, Beds on Order and LEAVES!

Yesterday we attended the local holiday parade downtown. I really expected Henry to be thrilled and Gabe to be trouble because the parade started right at his nap time. Instead it was the opposite =) Henry was bored and Gabe was so excited. While we waited for the parade to start, we bought cotton candy from a vendor outside. Henry really liked it but Gabe wasn't so sure about food that literally stuck to his fingers. He tried instead to give it all to Mike who was holding him. It was actually pretty funny watching him feed Mike the sticky mess =)

 

In general the parade was lame. There were a few holiday floats but it was mostly advertisements for local businesses. Many of the 90 participating businesses didn't even bother with a float and just sent a company vehicle to go down the street. It was really sad. I guess after Disney World you get a bit spoiled with their parades =) The local parade took forever because people were walking too slow or vehicles were backed up waiting for people in front of them to go. Then there would be huge gaps between floats. I think that's why Henry lost interest fast. After about float 20 out of 90, he was done waiting to see Santa. We gave it another 10 floats and then decided to get lunch at a nearby restaurant to wait out the parade. It was awful getting into downtown with the traffic and we expected it to be just as bad getting out.

 Luckily we got to the restaurant way ahead of others who about 60 floats in had the same idea as us. We had a nice lunch and then headed toward our car. We waited no less than an hour to get out of the parking garage. It was awful. But we made it. Then it was off to the furniture store in Grand Rapids to buy beds for the boys. We've been going back and forth on the captain beds versus the bunk beds. Mike and I were at a complete stale mate over which was better. In the end we compromised with getting the bunk beds and two tall dressers. Mike wanted a long dresser and a tall dresser but I didn't think that made sense long term when the long dresser was very long and would take up a lot of space. Not to mention Gabe can reach everything on a shorter long dresser. So I guess we both ended up somewhat unhappy but the boys will still have new beds and dressers =)

In the photo above, the way the bunk beds work is they put both headboards on bottom and footboards on top. We won't be bunking immediately so the beds will look a little different than pictured here. We decided to go with just the mattress for now too since they don't need a really high bed at this age. It will look similar to how it does in the photo with the headboard being kind of "high" at the top. We also didn't buy the drawers on the bottom.

Otherwise, today has been a day of baking for me for my meal exchange coming up later this week and Mike is out working on the leaves. I feel kind of bad I can't help him. I'm getting bigger and more uncomfortable as the weeks progress but I'm still feeling pretty good. However, raking leaves and dragging heavy loads to the curb is a bit much for me at this point. Luckily Mike doesn't complain. Poor guy is doing a lot of work by himself! We really want to plant more shade trees along the fence in the backyard. Maybe I'll just keep that to myself though until the memory of raking is gone from Mike's mind next summer =)

 

Half the backyard leaves up front.

Quick picture through our kitchen window.