Tonight we ate an early dinner and then headed out right at 5 pm with a good friend of ours and his kids so we could catch the Halifax Parade of Lights which is essentially a Christmas parade. It’s filled with floats, marching bands, majorettes (I *love* majorettes, I always wanted to be one when I was a kid!), and of course the Big Guy, Santa Claus.

It was a great night for our first parade in Halifax. It wasn’t too cold, just comfortable for the most part. I was a little chilly by the end of the parade but overall it was very nice. There was one “huh?!” moment though. They had a float sponsored by one of the fitness places go by and they were pole dancing. I’m no prude whatsoever, believe me, but pole dancing in a parade for kids and families? Really?!

The kids had a blast. They sat with their friends on the curb and watched everything go by. Hayley got a candy cane from one of the floats and Breanna got a hug from Cookie Monster, so all was good. And much to my amusement and glee there was a Stormtrooper doing the Running Man. That just pretty much filled me with joy.

And much joy was also had courtesy of the Grinch and Kermit the Frog, consecutively.

Also, every once in awhile I see a person on the street that makes me wish I could get over my shyness and just go up and ask them if I could schedule a whole photo shoot with them. This Native American girl in a Mic’Maq float was one of them. She was just so photogenic and beautiful that I would love to spend an hour taking pictures of her. And the man in the amazing traditional costume behind her for that matter.

Next week there will the the lighting of the big tree downtown and I’m not sure if we’ll go or not; they figure that about 100,000 people showed up for the parade, and I can’t imagine a large crowd showing up in one small park for a tree lighting, but we’ll see. In the meantime I had a lot of fun tonight and took almost 200 pictures. Good times! 🙂

You can see the rest of them over here.