Irish Channel St. Patty's Day Parade

All right, first things first...I am blogging tonight from my brand spankin' new super computer. Garrett got in touch with his "inner geek" last week and built me a suh-weet computer and I am whizzing through the cyber world at an alarming speed tonight, my friends. I never in one billion years would have imagined that a computer could make me so happy, but my how life has changed. I am always impressed that Garrett can just "build" a computer. From scratch. Seriously. Don't know how he does it, but he does, and I am very happy to be computing on this bad boy. Thanks, honey!

And also know that I have lots of pictures from the last few weeks since we've been back from Idaho, but they are getting transitioned from the old computer to the new one, so my posts will probably be a little chronologically out of order for the next little while until I get caught up. :)

On Saturday, we headed uptown to the Irish Channel for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. A parade in this city?? I know you're thinking 'no way'! We didn't go to it last year, but heard that it is quite a tradition and Garrett knew some people from work who go and a few who were in it, so we decided at the last minute to go. And since Tyler is obsessed with green, we figured it'd be a hit. And it is tradition at this parade that you not only catch beads, but you also can score yourself some fresh cabbage, potatoes, carrots, etc. So, that sealed the deal for us...I mean who doesn't enjoy getting pelted with some fresh produce at a parade every once in a while? We were quite intrigued by the thoughts of it.

So we headed out and got our spot 1/4 of the way into the parade route. It was pretty warm, in the upper 80's and the sun felt so good! We quickly learned that this parade was a bit different than Mardi Gras parade. There were floats, but it was mostly people walking the route. They were members of different "Irish" clubs in the area. Who knew there were so many Irish folks in these parts? And we also quickly realized that the big draw to attract people to walk or ride in the parade is the fact that they drink lots and lots and lots of beer from beginning to end. You'll spot many a beer can in the pictures of the people in the parade. And I was glad we were near the beginning of the route because those guys had a lot of route left to walk and a lot of beer to put down and I wouldn't have wanted to see the end result!

The big draw was also to get a flower from one of the men walking the parade. As you can see, they all carried around silk flowers with them to hand out. Generally they'd give someone a flower in exchange for a kiss or a can of beer... We were not giving out either of these items, but we did have an awfully cute baby with us who scored a nice green flower and went to town seeing how it tasted. So, you were generally going for flowers, beads, and produce at this parade!

And we actually weren't all that far into the parade when Tyler decided he was SO hot. Like so hot that he was "melting". And I mean melting in the sense that he had a meltdown that can only be described as being of epic proportions. He kept saying he was hot so we gave him something to drink, let him sit in the stroller, etc, etc, etc... and to no avail. He just couldn't take it anymore and was just crying and crying, so in utter desperation, we just walked back to the car and went home and he was asleep in like 1 minute and 23 seconds or something. Just when you think that you are well beyond times like these.... Who knew we picked such a bad day for him? I guess you win some, you lose some, eh? All in all, though, it was kind of fun to check out something new (even if we didn't see the whole thing)!
Oh yeah, and the crowd was...interesting...as you can probably imagine. So I leave with you this last and final picture of this dear couple who was watching the parade on the other side of the street from us. And I have only one thing to point out. If you ever wondered if the old adage was true that says "for every Jack there is a Jill"...let this picture above prove that to be 100% true. :) (I guess they must have really wanted themselves a head of cabbage!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! And I'll have more pictures to post later this week of our own little celebration tomorrow.