Who got to go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? This guy. About six weeks before Turkey Day, my wife was offered an incredible opportunity to participate in the parade, and immediately said “yes”. How could she resist, sure we were planning on having our families over and even had two relatives flying from out of town for the holidays. But hey opportunities like this don’t come around that often and so she had to jump at the chance. Thankfully our families were incredibly understanding and made other arrangements and the out of towners just came with us.

My wife was lucky enough to be asked to help hold Buzz Lightyear in his final appearance in the Parade, after five years he’s retiring and that meant a trip to NYC for the three of us. She even had the opportunity to have a guest participate, and that meant our out of town guests to come with us and have our aunt help keep Buzz from flying away. Unfortunately, I could not participate since someone had to watch the munchkin since she didn’t meet the weight requirement. But hey that’s ok, we got grandstand seats between 72nd and 76th street on Central Park West, so we’d be set.

Oh yeah there was one other wildcard, because of the possibility of very very high winds, there was a chance that the balloons would be shelved for the first time in over 40 years. Up until Thanksgiving morning, we had no idea if Buzz would fly or not. We were lucky though the wind although very present, didn’t keep the balloons form flying, but they were cinched up super low to the ground. But at least they flew, can you imagine we moved heaven and earth to be here and now balloons, that would just have been too funny.

Hi mommy, how’s it hanging

It was a very early day for us we had to be at the seats by 8 am and were about 1 ½ miles away, it was way too cold to walk and we couldn’t bring a stroller, so a 6 AM wakeup call was in order and a hotel exit by 6:45. Mental note for next time, give yourself twice as much time as you think you’ll need to get a kid bundled up for the cold weather. I thought 45 minutes was enough, but man all the protesting to put on thermals, pants three layers of shirts and a jacket was incredibly tough. But hey were in NYC for the ultimate parade, and we get to see mommy walking in it holding Buzz. How cool is that. Besides little “S” was jazzed to go the parade even though she really had no idea what one was. I made sure to bring enough entertainment, food and distractions or so I thought. Unfortunately with temps in the high 20’s we were all miserable, but we were here and very excited to see mom in action soon. Being Bay Area natives, we just were not prepared for the cold, even though we had layers we just didn’t have enough stuff to keep us warm. Thankfully our hotel suggested we take blankets otherwise we would have been even colder then we already were. How do you explain to a 2 ½ year old why it’s so cold, and that you MUST keep your hand and gloves on. If you have any suggestions please tell me, cause I tried every trick in the book, and was just not that successful.

In any even the parade was a really really great time, if there ever is a next time, I will take even more layer and more blankets. This was an amazing one in a lifetime experience and I’m so happy my wife got to knock off one of her bucket list items, I’ve had my chances this year to knock off so many, it was nice to see her get a chance too.