Guides on Parade

Our little town holds a Christmas parade every year. The main street (co-incidentally name Main Street) is closed off and the residents gather along the street and watch the local entrants. It really is very cute, with the local groups like rugby, creches, retirement village, churches etc all participating and it is extremely festive and friendly.

They also have a few carnival rides set up, sausage sizzle and a band or two for when the parade finishes. Lollies and ice blocks are handed out to the kids and Santa comes to visit on the back of our towns antique fire engine. 

This year one of the guiding parents organised a float for us to participate. The kids love going in the parade but we leaders are usually too exhausted by the end of the year to bother, so if a parent isn't interested in organising it then we usually give it a miss. This year I actually had a parent respond to my email asking if anyone was interested in doing it, so that was pretty pleasing.

Here are our girls going so slowly (so slow it was funny; people walked past us faster) down the road to join onto the end of the parade. Our theme was Guiding is Fun with a tent, fake camp fire, trees, etc set up on the truck. The girls either had fishing rods that they made or marshmallows on the ends of toasting sticks. The feedback that we had from the crowd was that they just loved the girls with their rods and marshmallows and singing.

 

 

"Dad please go away and stop taking our photos!"

 

 

 

The 20 or so girls (we could have lost one or two along the way) were all singing Guiding songs as we drove along the parade.

 

There was actually a fair bit of work that went into it but it was great PR for the unit and the girls really enjoyed themselves.