Santa is a coming!

Well Nicole and I have been buying up gifts for the girls and others since we have found some good deals and I would rather have it finished sooner than later. We also attended 2 parades over the weekend. Saturday night was the Oshawa Santa Claus parade of lights. Everyone really enjoyed it and they had some really fun floats. They had a YMCA float and had people on the sides of the road dancing to the YMCA song. The young ones didn't get it but you could see the older crowd light up when they heard that float coming down the street blasting those familiar tunes! They had a great parade with good flow and lots of variety with bands spaced nicely throughout.

Sunday afternoon we also attended the Toronto Santa Claus parade. What a let down! I'm not kidding. This was a complete mess and looked like it was really thrown together on a last minute shuffle. They start with the police cars from the area and the celebrity clowns. They began the parade and then no one to be seen. We waited 5 minutes until the next float came around the corner. Now we were at the 3/4 mark of the parade so we were not at the end but close enough. Finally more floats and bands came around the corner but that was short lived. We saw about another 20 minutes of floats and then another break in the parade. We waited 4 times for the parade to come around the corner and each time was longer and longer. We saw 99% of the parade and once Santa failed to show up in a timely manner and packed up and left. We weren't the only ones! Lots of other people left before we did but almost everyone around us was complaining. I have never seen such a mess of a parade before and since it is the longest running parade, you expect a better showing than what was the final outcome.

We decided we won't be going back to the parade for 3 reasons.

1. You need to get a spot early or you won't be able to get the kids close to see. We got our spot at 11:40am and the parade didn't start until 12:45pm. It took until 1:53pm until the parade got to us.

2. The cold and poor parade flow. I don't want myself or me kids freezing while we wait for a break in the parade. I never thought I would pay $9.00(which is cheap compared to every other lot) at the green P lot to watch a shitty broken parade. I could have watched it at home and they could have made it look awesome but we say it for what it really was.

3. The traffic was super shitty and took us 25 minutes to go 1KM to get onto the Gardiner to hit the DVP north. I was stuck in an intersection with a bus and ambulance block me from turning left with traffic passing in front and behind us. The DVP was also shitty heading north.

So next year we will attend the Oshawa parade. Great little parade and local with a 10 minute drive home. We will watch the Toronto parade from home while drinking beer, eating chili and have the comfort of heat and a clean toilet next year!!

Cheers!