Santa Parade 2012

Every year the City of Arlington has a Santa parade on the first Saturday in December.  Back in October, I was asked to create a parade entry that would advertise the Nativity Festival our church is creating for the second year in a row.  Someone else was in charge last year and the entry consisted of some people dressed in thrown together costumes walking down the street handing out invitations to the festival.  Details here.  I told Dode later that I thought we could do a better job getting people interested in the festival.  Have you ever heard the expression, "from my mouth to God's ears?"  Well, I guess His attitude on the matter is, "If you think you can do a better job, go for it!"  I wasn't very excited to receive the invitation.  They called on a busy day during a busy month and adding one more thing to my life didn't sound very do-able.  I reluctantly agreed to do it, then later checked the calendar and saw it was on the same day as the Crafty Maiden, a cookie exchange on steroids my mom and I had plans to attend.  I knew if I could find someone to be my helper along with my willing husband, I could pull it off.

I wanted to make a float.  The person helping me thought she could access a flat bed trailer for us to use but in the end that fell through.  Dode hauled Matt and Janice's old boat trailer out of the bushes at his dad's house and brought it over here.  (The boat that belongs on the trailer was intentionally sunk in the Edmond's underwater park as a dive site).  Dode's dream is to get the trailer licensed (once we figure out who has the title, long story) and use it for the produce co-op.  Once we get it licensed, he's planning to build a heavy duty deck on it so that the pallet jack can transfer full pallets of produce directly from the back of the semi truck to the trailer.  (Currently we unload every pallet and load our small trailer box by box.  I buy 70-100, 40-50 pound boxes of produce each time!)

Dode started by ripping off all the boat trailerish parts (the things that would hold the boat in place).  He left the front post that holds the spare tire because he figures he will someday hook a winch to it to help him get heavy things on the trailer.   When I was asked to do the parade, we didn't have the time or money to put the deck he wants on the trailer so we did a quick fix by using sheets of plywood he'd purchased for re-roofing the back of the garage (one of those urgent but not absolutely critical projects he's trying to get to).

He wasn't too excited to have his plywood rained on so he parked it in the produce carports as long as he could.  A week before the parade, he built the stable for me.   Dode had some landscape timbers he'd picked up from a free pile on the side of the road and we added a few more to create our stable.  (I'm already brainstorming how to reuse it for day camp.  Dode says, "Just another thing to haul out there and assemble.") After the stable was added to the trailer, it was too tall for the carports so the trailer with all of the plywood was stuck in the rain for the rest of the week, sorry Dode!

Our finished stable sitting on the trailer.  The roof still needed trimming in this photo.

We borrowed the star from a friend at church.

 Dode bought a metal pipe and bent the pipe for the hanger.  A coat of hammered bronze spray paint made it look like a passable hook.

Getting closer to the finish line.... Dode thinks it looks like one of those ancient Egyptian boats.

The manger we used is usually under our Christmas tree.  Baskets from the house.  Burlap sacks are from the day camp supplies.  I bought 20 yards of muslin to cover the perimeter of the trailer and disguise the rust and moss.    The silver thing you see in the front of the trailer is my old flag stand from cub scout days.  We were brainstorming something for the people that would be standing on the float could hold onto while the float was moving.  We ended up reusing the trampoline parts we used for the Fourth of July parade.  We got some walking sticks from Lynn and attached them to the trampoline supports.  Once I got to this point, I sent an email to my mom asking for suggestions.  She thought I should add some greenery.

Ours is nearly as fancy!

I was feeling pretty frustrated because no one wanted to help with the parade entry.  It was difficult to find people to come and walk in the parade.  No one was signing up at church.  I couldn't borrow a trailer or a stable.  I couldn't borrow costumes for the children who would participate (they might get dirty) or some painted animals (rain could ruin them).  It was just Dode and I trying to get the float ready with the cost for all the supplies coming directly from our pockets.  Sheri heard me complaining and let me borrow the 48 poinsettias she braved the Black Friday crowds to buy.  She's using them for setting out around the nativities at church.  They gave our float some much needed color and gave me some emotional support.  

In the week leading up to the parade, Dode and I became avid weather watchers.  The forecast was generally for rain (90% chance) and we worried that no one would show up to participate in our entry or to watch the parade.  When I checked the weather the night before the parade, they were even forecasting scattered thunderstorms.  No!  Fortunately, it was only sprinkling during the parade and people showed up to participate.

Because I wasn't going to be at the parade, I tried to think of anything and everything they would need. I sent along zip ties, tape, pruning sheers, and scissors as "just in case" tools.  I never got to see the float actually assembled so in addition to everything else he had to accomplish that morning, Dode had one additional instruction, "Get me a photo of the float with everyone on it, fully decorated."  Can you guess what happened?  In the chaos of getting to the staging area and getting everything organized, he never had the chance to take a photo.  Luckily, some of the other people there got some pictures.  

Mary and Joseph

We were able to use the same costumes that were sewn last year for the living nativity actors.  The Larsons (a family from church) and Elizabeth were our actors that rode on the float.  

Morgan (daughter of the couple above) and Elizabeth

We had children who came in their own costumes walking in front of the float handing out invitations to the festival.  Miriam was hanging out in the car when this photo was taken.

Our banner letting people know who we were.  Miriam is the angel in the middle with a little pink peeking out.  Soon after Dode got to the staging area, another parade entry showed up that was almost an exact replica of ours.  The local Christian school had a living nativity float.  The parade wasn't very organized with assigned positions so the person helping out in my place had Dode nose his way into the middle of the parade to put some space between the identical entries.  Can you see the girls with the banner and the group behind with the yellow banner?  Dode (in the big white van in the background) had to squeeze himself, our 12 passenger van pulling a 20 foot trailer, into that space!

Our float going down the parade route.  We were able to use some wooden animals from last year's festivities that wouldn't be used again.  I already had a bale of hay that I'd used to decorate for fall so my plan was to break that open to disguise the plywood surface.  Unfortunately the day was very windy so they never used it fearing it blow all over during the parade route.  Dode installed speakers under the float to play Christmas carols.  He never got to sound check it so we aren't sure if we blasted everyone out with our music!

On the parade route.  Mary Lynch, who was my helper, is walking along the float in a blue jacket.

handing out invitations

My dad and his wife drove over from Camano Island (a 45 minute drive) to watch the girls in the parade.  At the end of the parade route, Miriam broke down in tears because she hadn't noticed her grandpa on the side of the road.  He was there!  After the parade, he took the girls home to his house for an overnight visit.

Something this complicated, relying on so many people, can never go completely smoothly.  What went wrong?  Well, Dode showed up at 11:00 (an hour before the parade began) but never saw anyone official to check in with.  The person who was helping (our creative genius) wasn't there yet and he started getting nervous that he'd have to place the various features around the float without any idea of what would look right.  She showed up a few minutes later and got to work on that, but then they couldn't find baby Jesus.  Dode went all through the van looking for Him but in the end they created a fake baby.  Then, when he got out the invitations the children would be handing out he found the baby in the bottom of the box.  He tested the mp3 player in the parking lot and it worked, but when he unexpectedly nosed his way into the parade route, he didn't have a chance to get it started and the parade was 1/3 over before he got the music running.  The parade organizers had no plan for what people would do at the end of the route.  It became a big mob of people with nowhere for him to drive.  He had everyone get off the float and walk back to the beginning since he would have to travel on surface streets back to the staging area.  After tear down, as he left the staging area to go home, he saw in his mirror a flash of white fall from the float.  He stopped in the middle of the street to see what fell and couldn't find anything.  Once he got home, he saw that the star we'd borrowed from a friend at church was missing a piece.  Dode's dad Lynn had been his support vehicle on the way there and back so he drove back to town to find the missing piece.  He could only find a little piece of it.  It'd been run over and demolished.  

Was the parade a success?  People at church kept asking me that very question and I could only say, "Ask my husband!"  I know it was a ton of work for a 20 minute parade.  The whole idea is to drum up interest in the Nativity Festival and I think we did that.  I also think that by showing up with an identical float as the Christian school that we dispelled the "Are Mormons Christians?" question a bit.  Our bishop attended the parade and he said he heard someone holler out, "Way to include the Savior!" in a parade that was mostly focused on the secular parts of Christmas.  Will I do it again next year?  If they ask me to, I will say, "Yes".  We'll save the stable, the hook, and the muslin for next year.  Hopefully by then the trailer will be built in its permanent configuration.  Hopefully I can use the same costumes next year and Sheri will once again let me use her poinsettias   It won't be as much work next year but it will still be a big commitment.   Thankfully I have a husband who is willing to help out.