A Christmas First For Me,

My son-in-law saw a flyer for an old fashioned Christmas parade in downtown Tehachapi.  Tehachapi is in a valley surrounded by mountains.  At this time of the year it is cold.  I was excited and joined in with a "Yes! Let's go".  The day came for the parade and I was ready to go into town at noon.  'No', I was told, it is not until the end of the day at 5pm.  That's good, I can do that.  Now something I have not told you was that all I brought with me was a knitted poncho for a coat.  I had a hoodie, so I decided that would be enough, after all it was 47 degrees and the sun was nice as we left.  My daughter was on the cell and was not paying attention.  We got into town, the streets were busy as people began choosing the site they wanted to sit at to watch the parade.  Everyone had parkas, blankets, hats, gloves, I began to ponder the situation.  The sun was setting, the wind was "breezy".  I began to get cold. It was evident that I did not have enough layers on.  The granddaughter was cheery, but by 5:30pm the sun was down, it was 27 degrees, and the wind chill was 17.  As you can tell, between my shivering and the granddaughter's the pictures took on a blurry view.  The parade was nice the community put lots of thought into their floats.  There was a consensus amoung the citizens that Christ was the focus of Christmas.  I was uplifted by that.  On the other hand, I have never been to a parade at night and never at 27 degrees in dress pants, a sweat shirt hoodie, and no gloves or stadium blanket.  I am still warming up. 

When we got home, we made homemade chili and added Fritos and cheese to make Frito Pie.  We also made wassail. The granddaughter was not sure she was all that festive yet, so it was hard to get her to sing along with the carols we were having fun with. 

After supper, we all retired to our rooms to snuggle under warm blankets to sleep and dream of warm sunny beaches with a nice warm ocean breeze.

The video is of the Tehachapi Marching Band.  The town is very proud of them and they handled the circumstances well.