December Highlights:
- Celebrate mom’s birthday
- Lilah volunteers to build Rose Parade float for Kiwanis International
- Trip to June Lake with the kids
- Grandma Carol comes to town
- We celebrate Christmas at my sister’s house
Rose Parade Volunteering
I will not do a deep dive into the activities this month so that I can cover the highlights for the year. However, I did want to share a bit of the Rose Parade volunteering experience as it was the first time anyone from my family has ever done anything like this. For years, we have watched the Rose Parade on TV, and, as a teenager, I remember experiencing the parade live on a very cold morning. But participating as a volunteer gives you a deeper appreciation of exactly what it takes to build these floral marvels on wheels.
My job was actually pretty simple – drive a group of 5 teenage girls to Pasadena so they could could participate in the hands-on float building process while I took pictures to document their experience. The day of volunteering began with the girls standing in line with hundreds of other volunteers. Considering the number of people, the line moved remarkably fast. Once the girls reached the hangars containing the floats they were put into a group and welcomed by someone from the Phoenix Decorating company, one of the three or four companies responsible for building the 50+ floats for the parade. The next step was being admitted into the hangar where another company representative told the girls what they’d be doing for their 8 hour day. The process begins with a pair of scissors and boxes of dry flowers that the girls are expected to spend an hour our or so cutting. All the groups start this way — at least for the week that dry flowers and seeds are applied to the floats (adding fresh flowers happens 3-4 days before the parade starts) — and then eventually progress to adding the dry ingredients to the framework of the the actual floats.
Lilah and her partner were given the West Virginia float where they pretty much spent their entire day adding parsley and rice to their section — pine trees covered in snow (the parsley represented pine needles and the rice was was used to represent the snow). It is painstaking work and it requires two people because while one person applies glue and pours the rice and parsley to the float, the other one holds a box to catch all the rice and parsley that does not stick to the float on the first pour. That way, you don’t end up with all the ingredients on the floor instead of the float, which would be a waste. The girls each took turns at being the pourer and the holder and this is how they pretty much spent their day with a few breaks, of course, and some time off for lunch which is provided by the float building company. To apply the ingredients requires sitting, standing and sometimes getting into some awkward positions. Lilah said she was sore the next day, but would definitely be up to going back to volunteer at the parade again next year.
I found it interesting that even though the girls spent all day on their section, it was still just a tiny fraction (maybe 1/50th) of the entire float. And what the girls worked on was basically the tail end of the float building process because before any dry or fresh flowers go on the float, the framework, consisting of steel and chicken wire, needs to be build. The float is then “cocooned” and sprayed with a polyvinyl material which acts as a base for inserting decoration. This base is painted with the colors of the flowers to be applied to the float. That’s how all the volunteers know what flowers to add to their sections of the float. I am simplifying the construction process here for brevity, but it truly is an amazing process to witness and learn more about.
And now onto the year’s highlights. Happy New Year to you all! More next month.
2015 Highlights
It was another eventful year with many special moments to be thankful for. Here’s a few of the highlights:
- Lilah has braces removed
- Uncle Mario and cousin Andrea come to visit
- Luke gets his first new snowboard
- We visit June Lake for the first time
- Cousins hang out at Fred’s 50th birthday party
- Lilah joins high school swim team and wins year end championship for her event (50 yard breaststroke)
- Luke and I stay slopeside for the first time at Mammoth
- Meet up with Jill, an old friend from high school — hadn’t seen her in more than 20 years
- Cat becomes a certified Les Mills Grit trainer
- Lilah and Luke celebrate birthdays
- Luke reaches a max speed of nearly 45 mph on his snowboard
- Lilah receives an academic achievement award for her 4.0+ GPA
- My parents get a new car
- Luke becomes the leader of his YMCA basketball team
- I write three new poems, Keep on Living, The Old Country, and Another Year Around the Sun
- Sebastian graduates high school
- Lilah plays “Rainbow Connection,” and Luke plays “Back to Russia” at music recital
- Family vacation to Lake Tahoe – we try out water skiing and ride Flume trail for the first time
- Luke goes to his first basketball camp
- Chile wins Copa America for the first time – I celebrate with my parents
- Lilah and I take a trip to Denmark to visit Ruben and his family – also visit Sweden and London
- Reconnect with old friend on my birthday
- Luke starts seventh grade
- Lilah begins going to her new school
- My dad goes to Chile, experiences 8.3 earthquake on one day, then celebrates Chilean independence the next day
- We see AC/DC at Dodger Stadium
- I race Ventura to start season, take third place at Hansen Dam triathlon, and have solid races at Malibu and Carpinteria to end the season
- I sell 4-plex and use money to pick up new properties in Reno
- I get a promotion to Marketing Communications Manager at work
- Lilah rocks Halloween as Veruca Salt and Luke creates his own costume which he calls cabbage
- Tia Chela leaves us at 102+ years of age
- Take a trip with my sister and dad to Miami to see cousin Mario and Lindsay get married
- See my cousin Julio
- Celebrate the life of a great man gone too soon
- Annual visit from Grandma Carol
- We were thankful to celebrate so many birthdays and be together during the holidays
