Four Picture Friday: Oakland Children's Holiday Parade

After receiving a late tip from Little Chickling, we rushed downtown to catch the Children's Holiday Parade. We parked on the 'wrong' side of downtown and walked a few blocks and found ourselves, unexpectedly, at the headwaters of the parade and a few feet from Chimpy's TV friend (and parade Grand Marshall) Miss Rosa.




The woman in purple is Miss Rosa, PBS Kids' morning block host. Chimpy was a little starstruck but I called to Miss Rosa anyway. The wave and smile Miss Rosa gave to Chimpy affected Chimpy in a way I've never seen before and immediately afterwards she was emanating happiness and excitement.



Another block and we found ourselves suddenly under the parade floats. This had a huge effect on Jojo who couldn't understand why I was taking pictures of things other than the balloons.





We caught up with our friend, M., and sat down to watch the parade go by.



You're missing the balloons again!

Like much of what goes on in downtown Oakland, the parade seems to be overlooked by the rest of the Bay Area, which was great because it wasn't very crowded. Plus, it wasn't unusual for the parade watchers to suddenly rush the Curious George (for example) float. Here Chimpy and M. pose with the dancing Christmas tree ladies.



We took off a little early as the parade overlapped nap time so we missed Santa but we had a great time.