This morning I was rudely awoken at 9 with my mother asking me if I was going to go.

“Go where?” I mumbled, squinting through sleepy eyes.
“To see the Rose Parade floats!” my mom exclaimed as if I wasn’t paying attention.  (What she doesn’t know is that her first sentence or two woke me up and I never actually “heard” them.
“Ugggh.” I grunted and closed my eyes, huddling under the blankets more.

With a swift tug, she pulled the blanket off and held out her hand.

“Come on,” she gestured for me to get up.

Sure that I should go, I still hadn’t decided if it was worth the lack of sleep and suffering to get dressed in the cold air.  Soon she got tired of waiting for me and went back downstairs to continue without me.  I eventually resolved to get up and drag myself downstairs, shivering.  We piled into the car and headed off, with my mom happily sharing some of the dark chocolate-covered cherries she’d bought and informing my dad that the way he was driving to get on the highway is not the most efficient way to get there.  Meanwhile, my dad went forth as he pleased, changing the radio station sporadically until he settled on a Spanish channel called QueBuena!  o.O  Of all the stations… he had to choose the one we wouldn’t understand?  Haha, I don’t get it.  But I can see how the other songs are a little grating to the ears if you aren’t used to it.  Along the way, I texted Panda because he lives in that area, so going that way reminded me of him.  🙂

So we got to Pasadena City College, parked the car, and got our tickets before boarding a shuttle to the site.  It was a bit of a gloomy day, but that turned out to be nice since we didn’t have to sweat it out in the sun and the flowers probably withered a little less.  I volunteered to decorate the floats a few years ago, so I kind of already knew how it worked, but it’s always cool to see so many nice flowers.  Strangely, I wasn’t in a picture-taking mood, so I just enjoyed looking at the floats as my dad ran around snapping shots.  About halfway through his camera died, so he moved on to my mom’s, lol.

One of the few pictures I did take with my camera, of my parents.

We were walking for a good two, two and a half hours before getting back to the car and navigating our way to a dim sum place on Garfield and Valley.  Our family friends also have their office there and we just happened to run into the husband coming back from a lunch break as we left from our own lunch.  We went upstairs, where my parents caught up with him and I wished I could be spending time with Panda.  It was a nice day out with my parents though – we don’t get to go that often and my dad is going back to China in two days.