Launceston Christmas Parade

Yesterday we went to the L'ton Christmas parade. It started at 11a,m so I went to the gym first and Mum and Collette met me in the gym carpark at 10.30. We then walked into town from there as we knew that it would be extremely difficult to find a park.






We got there in plenty of time and found a good spot on the grass opposite Health and Fitness on St John Street. It was a great spot as we were near the beginning of the floats so did not have to wait for ages for them to come up the road.





We saw Punchbowl with Lisa, Jalen and Noah go past and we saw Emily and Rohan on the Norwood float. Hallie only had eyes for Santa and her eyes nearly popped out of his head when his float came past. She was a bit disappointed that he had not brought any presents along but I explained to her that he was here for a quick visit and then would be back home working on getting the presents ready.

Lisa and Noah

Oliver sat in the gutter with one elbow leaning on his knee giving little waves to everyone. I don't think he quite knew what was going on but he loved watching it and sat there very seriously taking it all in.





Sarra made sure she waved to every single float and could not stop talking about how many sleeps there were and because her birthday is on Boxing Day she always adds one more day for her birthday.





Today she told her Primary teacher at church that she is very special because she was born the very next day after Jesus was born.




After the parade finished we converged on L'ton along with every other Launcestonian to do some Christmas shopping. I am happy to report I have finished except for Simon. But it was ridiculously busy and a pram does not make it any easier. In the end I just started bulldozing my way through and people soon got out of the way. Otherwise I would still be there now saying, "oops sorry, excuse me, pardon me could I just squeeze through there."

After town we went to McDonalds and honestly we lined up for half an hour before we got served. Collette said, I don't know what happened to 'fast' food. We then went to Mum's school and turned the eggs. Mum's Prep/1 class is hatching chicks this year and they need to be turned everyday.

Yesterday was of course federal election day so I did an absent vote at Youngtown Primary as that is part of the Bass electorate and of course I am in Lyons. Later in the afternoon we took Mum and Collette's dogs to the dog park at St Leonards and there were kids swimming there. There used to be a rope there that you would swing out on into the river and someone had put another one back up. Lisa, Chris and the kids were there with the Baileys and when my kids saw them swimming they of course wanted to jump in with their clothes on. Like I was going to let them.

Collette came home with us for a sleepover. Mum was headed to Burnie today for their Primary Presentation (Mum is Stake Primary Pres) and picked her up on the way. We had an 'election party'. Collette has this wicked dry humour and we spent the night nit picking all the pollies. Collette has this amazing ability to turn anything boring into something funny so we actually had a fun night watching Ray Martin and the election count.

We even stayed up and made it through John Howard's concession speech and Kevin Rudd's acceptance speech. Howard said the words 'please, please' heaps of time to shut the crowd up so he could talk and so could not stop laughing, Collette commenting that the political tongue-in-cheek show, 'The Chasers' will be using that in their post election show next Wed night.