ODP Day 4: Homecoming!

 

I don't know how it happened, but today I was thrown back to approximately 13 years ago in my past. I went to a Homecoming Parade.

Not just any Homecoming Parade, MY Homecoming Parade. My alma mater, my high school. I heard the cheerleaders young enough to be my daughters calling out the same cheers they did 13 years ago. I watched school club 'Sweethearts' in Barbie dresses ride on top of convertibles and wave like the Queen. I actually cheered a loud, inappropriate 'WHOOOO!' when the Forensics and Debate Sweethearts drove by. I got a little teen-angst when I saw all the popular girls who got voted Homecoming Maids and Queen smiling their (what I perceived as) fake, condescending smiles. I felt like I had zits on my face all over again.

And I had a lot of trouble believing that they didn't look back at me and see a cool (ish) teenager with red hair and piercings,  but a soccer mom in her 30s sitting in the trunk of her mini van looking a little like mutton dressed as lamb.


I'd forgotten how awful high school is.

The parade was fun though. The kids loved it, even Jaguar. There were marching bands and a gazillion cheerleaders and the ROTC and fire trucks and some local businesses with floats. Even though the humidity was torture (particularly for my mother-in-law's Scottish blood), we enjoyed ourselves and were glad we made the effort to go. (We nearly didn't.)










I picked Fifi up from school, and we drove straight to the parade, though it wasn't starting for another hour and a half, to avoid the traffic. We got a great parking spot facing the street and walked down to the ice cream parlour to kill time before the parade.

I say ice cream 'parlour' but I should really call it ice cream 'nirvana'. This was the first time I'd ever visited the 3 Flamingos Frozen Yogurt, but it won't be my last! The place was amazing. It was a self-serve frozen yogurt bar on steroids with every conceivable flavour of frozen yogurt you could imagine* and every possible topping you could ever literally dream up. You choose your fro-yo, top it up with sugary awesomeness and weigh it to determine the price. It was A.MAZ.ING.

(*Redundant wording, yes, but necessarily so.)

Ice Cream and Gran - what more could they want?

Buzzing with parading patrons.

Tahitian Vanilla and Gummy Bears for Lolly.

This is how much Jaguar loved the fro-yo.

I will be going back there often, with or without children.

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Oops I think I blinked.

So, you've seen the sneak peaks of The Dress already now, but here are the 'official' shots. We were running late this morning for school, so there was no time to get artsy-fartsy with the camera-phone.

I wore The Dress at a top today, tucked into my jeans. I loved the look, but it was too daggum hot today for it really, and I pretty much cooked all day long. The bird scarf and the pinstripe hat didn't really help with the heat. The shoes were my $5 number from Kmart.

Fifi wore The Dress under her school t-shirt, with a pair of pop socks and light-up graffiti sneakers. She wore a matching red ribbon in her hair. The t-shirt came off halfway through the day at school, because it was so hot, and then she swapped the dress out for running shorts and the t-shirt again for the parade. Fair enough, it was really humid and awful today.

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One last thing. Last year, if you'll recall, I participated in the October Dress Project to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support in Scotland. This year I still want to do the project for a cause, so I'm opening up a Pampered Chef Fundraiser Show to raise money for Help Whip Cancer. 15% of the sales will go to charity, so if you place an order, you'll be contributing to the fundraiser. It's the only way I can think to do ODP for charity this year, so please feel free to share the link with whomever, and hopefully together we can make a difference!