Bat-Family

The kid's participated in the Vienna parade tonight with their school. We were told participation in the parade was mandatory, but there were a significant number of kids from the school that weren't there. The parade was a bigger event than I was expecting and even had Mark Warner in it (I've actually got a story for that, so someone remind me later and I'll put that up). The good news is the experience was so much better than the parade last year.


We showed up later this year, but still ended up standing around for about an hour and a half before we actually started moving. This year we were group number fifty-six (whereas last year we were in the high seventies). So even though we had to wait until close to eight before our group started moving, it was still better than the previous year. Add to that this year it wasn't pouring rain, so that was a bonus. There was some very mild rain that was on and off during the course of the parade, but it was so light I would hesitate to even call it a drizzle (rather than drizzle I would probably call it mildly annoying).


Since we had no idea where to park we conned Ken into letting us park at his place. We even got to see Amanda very briefly (she was also in the parade with her school), but they went their separate ways almost immediately.


Another nice thing about the parade this year was the kids got to choose their own costumes this year versus last year where all the kids in the school had to go as Powhatan Indians. As you can tell, the kids current fascination with Lego Batman ended up influencing costumes decisions. They also requested I walk in the parade in costume also, and how could I refuse. And since Catherine wanted to be Bat-Girl does this mean we're out of the Princess phase? I don't know the answer to that, but we can only hope.


Ginger made the kid's costumes herself and I personally think they look pretty good. Sadly only some of the adults knew who I was since these days a lot of younger kids don't even know about Batman and Robin being a team. Nor do they realize that typically Batman is the adult and Robin is the youngster so the "joke" was lost on a lot of kids. I had a lot of the kids asking me stuff like "Who are you suppose to be?" When I replied I was Robin the next question was something along the lines of "Who's Robin?" And after explaining that Robin is Batman's sidekick the invariable next question was "What's a sidekick?" Kids these days. No one's teaching them the basics anymore.