Purple Pirate Parade

Today we did a quintiscential Tampa thing and headed down to Bayshore for the Gasparilla Pre-Schoolers Stroll. We hadn’t preregistred, but since we didn’t know what to expect we got there a little early and were the first in line for the walk-ups. The kiddos wore their Pirate costumes from Halloween and were quite adorable. We weren’t prepared with beads (a la Mardi Gras), which we learned parade marchers are expected to throw at the spectator in response to a request for beads! beads! (no nudity, at least not this weekend — the more debaucherous adult-oriented parade and festival are next weekend!). But, we made friends with some others in the walk up line who had a ton of beads, and they were kind enough to share with us. The Mom gave us enough beads for all of us to be wearing quite a few. Alex methodically sorted the beads around his neck and I wasn’t sure what he was doing until — woosh — he pulled off every string of non-purple beads. The little girl in the sharing family saw that Alex was into purple beads and kept finding more and coming up to him to grace him with another set.

Alex did a great job of throwing beads, and about halfway through Mike turned to me and said “I can really see the appeal of this!” It was fun to make the kids in the crowd happy by supplying them with beads. At the end of the parade route they were giving out goody bags, which included a really nice teddy bear, a Gasparilla T-Shirt (a bit big for Alex, but he’ll grow into it) and, the coolest, a set of red beads with a biplane attached to them. Three year old bliss!

The only blemish on an otherwise perfect day is that I spaced and didn’t think to put sun screen on any of us — Nate got his first sunburn on his arms and his face, Alex’s face is slightly red, and Mike’s face is very red. I somehow escaped with just a small patch of red on my chest. Oy.