Parade Survivor

Today was the Battle of Flowers Parade. For anyone who lives outside of San Antonio, this is fairly meaningless, but today was a local holiday which allows people to take off from school and work to attend the "grandaddy" of the Fiesta Parades. Our son's high school band marched in the 2.4 mile parade today and many parents walked with them to support them with cooling rags and water. I was one of the walkers and DS was carrying a glockenspiel. Not many people use those any more, but it was a heck of a lot lighter than marching bells.

The band director told everyone a month ago to start walking and hydrating to prepare for the parade. I never got started and I was a little worried about how I'd handle it, but it wasn't too bad. Actually it was pretty bad because of the humidity, but I didn't drop out and neither did DS. We actually only had two drop out: one about a block from the end, one as soon as we stopped marching.

I recorded the parade and we came home and watched it later. It was cool to pick ourselves out on TV.

Now about last night. I wanted to post this, but was too tired to stay up and do it. Last evening was the Battle of Flowers Band Festival, also known as Battle of the Bands. There were so many bands there, that they had two parades through the stadium. I've never been before, so it was quite an experience. I was able to go to the other side of the stadium where they were parading to take pictures of the band

They were so impressive! When they went transitioned from March Grandioso and a normal march to Tribute to Troy and a high step, the crowd went wild. Not only were the paying seats cheering, but you could hear the band groups in the stands on the other side of the stadium! I was a very proud band mom.

After the parading and several feature bands they had a mass band performance and awards ceremony.

I don't know how many kids were out on the field, but I counted 78 tubas, alone. There had to be at least 3000 musicians on the field! When they started announcing awards, I thought perhaps our band might win the "People's Choice" award because of the cheering. When someone else won it, I figured it was all over. They didn't win any of the ones I expected them to win. There was one more award, though, that I didn't know about. When they announced the President's Award, I didn't expect anything because our school is fairly new and I know there's a lot of politics in some of this stuff. Imagine my surprise when they announced our school's name. All of us band parents on the backside of the stadium went crazy.

It has been a great weekend, but I am now ready to rest and cool off. I'm still a little dehydrated and tired. DH is asleep beside me right now, but I wanted to share my good news. I leave you with a photo of DS with the newly acquired President's Cup from last night and the two of us together before the start of the parade. Notice the hat :-). 'Night all!