Reluctant participation in local festivities

I had no intentions of doing anything for St. Patrick's day. No traditional dinner, no cute little "Kiss me I'm Irish" t-shirt for Skylar (she ISN'T after all), no four leaf clovers or green mardi gras beads in sight....just another day with a higher than average number of intoxicated people driving around me.

Personally, it just seems like an irrelevant holiday--I'm not Irish, I don't drink beer, and I consider corned beef and cabbage a culinary crime. In my opinion, if people still have to go to work than it isn't a real holiday. Maybe when Skylar is old enough to care I will summon up the motivation to dye her milk green---my mom did that once. We wouldn't drink it.

So on Saturday Nicole and I decided to go for a little hike and then walk around downtown and find an obscure ethnic restaurant we've never tried. This was the official inauguration of the "Restaurant of the Month Club". Membership count: 2. We are taking new members if you are interested in joining. Micah and I always seem to end up at the same places that we know are good. Nicole is more of a risk taker. So we decided to find an Indian restaurant.

As we were driving downtown we noticed that all the streets were blocked off and traffic was a disaster. With genuine enthusiasm Nicole realized that a parade was about to start. I wasn't too excited...Nicole was thrilled!!! This is her idea of a good time. (Well, this and the occasional Renaissance festival.) This was local culture at it's finest! So to the parade we went along with thousands of Colorado's springs finest citizens.

It was incredibly long, at least 2 hours that we saw and we missed the beginning and end. Especially when you take into account that it was nothing but one long, live commercial for all the local businesses. With the exception of the man on stilts doing black flips. He was cool. Oddly, Nicole had seen him before in Manitou Springs.

The most unusual thing we saw was a girl in a sheer black tutu and thong. Seriously. At first we thought she wasn't wearing anything under that tutu, but she walked by us more than once so we were able to sufficiently analyze the situation. I couldn't believe that: 1. She had that kind of brazen confidence (she was not a small girl), 2. She wasn't freezing her buns off...literally, 3. She hadn't been arrested for indecent exposure.

Now a few pics from our day:

Skylar was thoroughly amused by her first parade. Can we say over-stimulation???

This was the highlight for me. It took 5 men to hold onto this enormous floating burrito.A picture of Pike's Peak with some fresh snow!

The day started with our little stroll through Garden of the Gods. It can hardly be called a hike, but the first place we tried to go was closed to the public that day.

Little did we know as we took in God's creation and gazed at the glorious mountains that a girl in a sheer tutu was about to cross our paths.