Viva Fiesta!

Fiesta, as you probably know, is Spanish for party. Fiesta takes San Antonio to a whole new level of party-ing. Every spring the city celebrates Fiesta for about 10 days. There is a Fiesta King and princesses who attend the many different events and parades all over the city. Some of these events are fundraisers for local charities. Some of them are just excuses to beber cerveza y margaritas. I am not big on crowds so we still have not ventured to any of the big events. But thanks to Chad's job, and the girls' schools, this year we had plenty of Fiesta of our own.
Elliott's preschool class dressed the kids up in festive, traditional clothes and sent home pictures like these:

I. Love. Her.

Most schools in the area have Fiesta parades where some or all of the students make shoebox floats. (Apparently this is also common in areas where Mardi Gras is celebrated, since that is what I found on all the websites I was desperately searching for ideas.) Abbey and all her classmates made their floats. She chose Littlest Pet Shop as the theme and came up with the design. Putting together the float was actually not too difficult, though it did require hot glue, double sided 3M adhesive, and twist ties. The bottom part is a shoebox and the backdrop is the lid. It is covered in various pink construction paper and tissue paper.

Front view.

Making their Fiesta debut: giant Panda, Whale, Snail, Chico the Pug, Greenie Bird, Pink Fox and Queen Cat.

The assignment sheet did state that the floats should all have wheels. We tried several ways to get it rolling but nothing worked. We even sent it to school without wheels, thinking she could just drag it along. Her teacher sent it home! In the end, Chad came up with a wooden spool/dowel system (also involving packing tape and super glue) that we hoped would hold up for the parades. Yes, parades plural. For the first parade, the kids came over to the base parade grounds. Overall, I was very disappointed in this parade. It was obviously more for the military up-and-ups than the families. Which is fine, but I don't really understand why they had the kids there at all. There was a lot of talking... then some more talking... then some ceremony stuff... and some more talking.

Finally some marching. All the states being represented.


Definitely the most entertaining part of the parade!

The next day, there was a short parade- just the kids and their floats- at the school. It was fun to see what the other kids came up with and Abbey was glad to see us there cheering for her. And yes, the wheels worked! She rolled right through both parades without incident.

The Air Force Band is always very involved in Fiesta. They march in the two big parades downtown and perform two concerts as well. This was the first year I took the girls to see the concert because they start so late for a school night.

The concert band performs Summon the Heroes, complete with patriotic screen images.

During this piece, I actually found myself getting emotional! Though our family has gone through a deployment and made our own sacrifices in support of the Air Force, it is NOTHING compared to what military families of the past endured. As I saw black-and-white images from WWII, I thought about those wives who took care of their families day after day, not even knowing for sure where their husband was, or if he was alive, with no phone calls or e-mails, hoping to get a letter from him... I'm getting choked up again! Anyway, thank a veteran- and his wife!

At intermission with Daddy in his fancy blues.

I was right about the concert being too late. Though we were enjoying the music, we left soon after intermission because Abbey could hardly stay awake. When I got home I found this in the backseat:

We all felt this way by the end of Fiesta!