Christmas Parade

After worship this morning, Daddy met Mommy and the boys at Belleview Church. It was raining but we were praying that it wouldn't deter our afternoon plans of being in the Belleview Christmas Parade. We headed to pick up pizza at Pasta Faire and then went to get set up for the parade. Fortunately the Willoughbys live one block north of the street where the parade staging was and were willing to let us invade their home. We ate lunch there with the rest of the Belleview Parade Gang and got changed into our costumes. The rain stopped about 30 minutes before the parade began and while it was windy and cool (in the high 50's) it turned out to be a nice afternoon for a parade.

This is the city of Belleview's 125th anniversary as well as Belleview Church's 125th anniversary of ministry. The overall parade theme was "A Hometown Christmas" and our church anniversary theme is "From Generation to Generation." So in honor of all of that, we decided to have a miniature replica of the original church on the float with our family dressed up in late 1800's costumes riding along. Then we had a group of folks walking alongside the float in their modern-day church t-shirts, handing out candy and fliers. Many thanks to Pete Pauze for making the float and to the Neislers for driving.

Despite these faces on the boys in the pre-parade pictures, they LOVED riding on the float. Five minutes into the parade, Parker was already talking about doing this next year. And Wesley kept insisting later on this evening that we should ride the float again TOMORROW.

Some of the BUMC families and friends who joined us along the parade route: