Building Dreams, Friendships & Memories

On January 1, New Years day, we spent the day sitting 10 rows away from one of the greatest parades in the country, the Rose Parade. The theme for this year's parade was "Building Dreams, Friendships and Memories". We woke up super early (3:00 am) so we could get parked and get in our seats on time. I was so excited to get to Pasadena that I made sure we were up WAY too early...better to be 3 hours early than late. Gotta love my OCD personality. We had to pose for a few pictures before the parade started. We needed to make sure we had enough pictures to document our first Rose Parade.

The number of people that were camped out on the sidewalks was unbelieveable. Some people had fire pits, heat lamps, tents, air mattresses and other things that made the overnight slumber party on the sidwalk a little more bearable. The weather was still pretty chilly early on...we had so many layers on our jackets almost didn't zip! I felt like the marshmallow puff man.The parade started with the stealth bomber flying overhead. It was pretty neat to see such a huge combat plane flying so low. The grand marshall was Paula Deen and once she passed the 100+ entries came by. There were so many beautiful floats, upbeat bands, and awesome horses that the time seemed to fly by. I stood up the whole time because I didn't want to miss a single second of the parade. Here are a few of the 300+ pictures that I took....Colorado Blvd was the place to be on January 1st so we had to get a picture on the popular street. We had such a great time! I'm so glad that I got to experience my first rose parade with Jason and my mom. We loved recapping the whole parade on the ride home...our favorites were the PacMan float, the Hawaiian float and the float with the surfing dogs.