Wish I Had a Parade for MY Birthday!

The kids and I and a number of our Boy Scout troop members walked in the Boy Scout Centennial Parade today in Washington. DC only allows 4 parades a year: the 4th of July, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, and the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year, however, a special exemption was made to celebrate the 100th birthday of Boy Scouts, and we got a parade. It was blasted hot again...over 100 when we got there and I'm sure even hotter by the time we began marching, but it was worth it just to be involved with something cool like this. The really good parade pictures are being e-mailed to me, as I was marching and didn't get many except of the Scouts preparing, but here's a sampling of the views today:

The boys relaxing while we are being registered for the parade...we are in front of the National Archives building.

JJ and Nicky are getting in formation with the rest of the troop and others in our group to begin marching. All the Scouts marching were separated into decades, representing each 10 years of Scouting. We were the 80s. Rock on. :)

We were able to see this float, which led off the parade. Very nice.

Here's JJ and one of our adult leaders in the parade. Nicky was in front of me, so I could only see his back.

I didn't have a good shot of the Capitol from our vantage point, but I did snag this great shot of the Washington Monument from the parade route.

Yep...Teddy's back! One of the Presidents from the Washington Nationals Presidents' Race was in the parade. Appropriate since President Teddy Roosevelt approved and presided over the very first Boy Scout parade, in 1911.

Our part over, the troop takes a much-deserved break with ice cream and water while we watch the rest of the parade.

Hey, it's Oscar the Grouch! On loan from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

This is the Eagle float, depicting the ultimate of Boy Scout awards.

And it wouldn't be a parade without...

...yep, Santa Claus! Walking with the Eagle Scouts. (Did you know that Santa was an Eagle Scout? Apparently he is.) And how appropriate, Santa on the official Christmas in July date! He'd better go rest up...he's on in 5 months!

Well, it wouldn't be an official Scout activity without:

Thunderstorms! Nicky and one of our adult leaders bring up the rear in a mad dash to get to the Metro station before the storm hits. We barely made it before the rain, but the wind helped blow us along...we went through a dust storm on the Mall and 60 mile per hour winds. Luckily the storm hit as we were underground on the train, and it was over by the time we got to our station.

What a privilege to be involved in this once-in-a-lifetime celebration of Boy Socuting's 100 birthday. Happy Birthday and here's to many, many more!