Madison's First Parade

Monday morning Jenna and I took the girls to the annual 4th of July parade on Sanibel. I have lived here my whole life, but I had never been to this parade. I had decided before our vacation started that I wanted to try and take Madison. Luckily Jenna agreed to go with us and bring Taylor and Lauren.  (Grandma was planning to go, but decided to stay behind to get things ready for the party at the condo that was to start at noon.) This was also Madison's first parade (unless you count the ones at Disney last year). The parade started at 9:30am. We weren't sure where we were going to park so as we were driving down Periwinkle (the main street) we saw some parking spots in a shopping center at the end of the parade trail. It made it easy for us to get out when we wanted to leave. We got there about 9:00. Madison didn't understand what we were doing there and asked to go home. I told her something fun was coming and fed her a couple of snacks to pass the 50 minutes or so until the parade got to us.

Once it got started the girls got up from their spots on the ground to stand and get a closer look. We quickly learned to wave and yell to get candy and goodies. I also had to work hard to protect my camera from getting wet! People in the crowd would throw water balloons at the floats, and people in the parade threw water balloons and buckets full of water and some had hoses squirting water back at the crowd! It was definitely a small parade, but I think Madison enjoyed it!

We decided to head out before the parade had ended. I think we had seen most of it. I was hot and starting to feel nauseous and I think the girls had enough too. Luckily our spot at the end of of the parade made for a pretty easy escape down the backroad.