December 2019

This is our first time going to the Santa Clause Parade!  We did our standard Parade trick - show up an hour early and make sure you have a lot of clothes on to keep you warm.  The parade goes through downtown and make a real mess of traffic, but the buses were mostly unaffected so getting in (and later out) was pretty easy.

We took our piece of curb and waited.  The first to go by was the police motorcycles and they went pretty close to edge to edge of the road.  If that didn't get you excited, the pipe bands also helped wake you up!
 

The floats were generally pretty far apart so there was lots of pause between displays.  It was cold enough that a float had a snow maker that actually dropped snowflakes on us.

There was only one Santa in the parade and he was up high on a float that moved fast - the kids barely got to see him before he was gone.  I think the kids enjoyed their time watching the parade.

The kids had a thought that their hair could grow down to their bums.  Sure, their hair needs to be blow dried and brushed after a bath, but the kids don't see that as a negative. 

The kids enjoy their gymnastics classes.  Every term they have a brief open house where the kids can show their parents what they can do.

Vancouver has had a winter solstice lantern festival for years and I have never been!  There are multiple locations - Granville Island, Roundhouse and Strathcona.  We had dinner plans already so we arrived just after the lantern walk had already left the community center. 

After the time in the park, the muscians got mobile and started to lead us on a walk back toward the community center.  The parade route did a big circle, but we took a shortcut back so we could beat the procession back to the community center.

The community center had a lot going on as well.  They had an inside lantern display and the main performance space had an african musican group playing.  It's tough to leave when the party is really getting going, but you can't keep kids up too late or you pay for it the next morning.