Super Parade

We had to do some rearranging of our schedules, and Ben had to take the day off of work, but today we went to the Super Bowl Parade downtown.

What an adventure! We knew the crowds were expected to be about a million-plus (and it was), so we left at 9:15. We took the bus to the light rail, and the light rail downtown. Thank goodness we went this route! Because we took the bus, we could buy all our tickets for the day while on the bus. It took us a couple of minutes, and one rider was upset with Ben because the driver gave Ben the wrong tickets and it took a little time to sort that out. That meant we missed the train, but the next one was only in 6 minutes so it wasn't worth getting upset over.

Anyway, when we got to the light rail, the line to buy light rail tickets was over 100 yards (going with our football theme) long! It was insane- and we were very glad to skip over the line, believe me!

The girls started out pretty strong, but it didn't last. Thankfully, I was armed with snacks, lunch, plastic bags so they could sit on the curb, and my phone. Even so, though, there was a lot of whining. A lot of "I'm bored!"

Overall, they did really well considering. We ended up standing for over 5 hours! Plus, there was a lot of walking, a lot of loud screaming, and very little action. We asked a lot from them, and I can understand why they whined (even if it was annoying and I kept asking myself "Why did we have children?")

We got there a little after 10, and the parade was supposed to start at noon. It ended up not starting  until about 12:30. We found a great place along the parade route that had a direct view of a large TV screen. The screen showed highlights from the Super Bowl and from the season. It was a little emotional, I'm not going to lie.

Finally, the parade started!

I made Ben take a selfie of us, and he was not happy because he just wanted to enjoy the parade (which is why I never should have allowed him to be in charge of pictures). If you look incredibly closely with a magnifying glass, Peyton Manning is in the upper left corner wearing an orange shirt and dark vest waving at the fans.

Here's Emmanual Sanders (10) and Demarius Thomas (88)

And the runningbacks- CJ Anderson and Ronnie Hillman

My favorite part of the day was when the team made it up to the podium and then the whole crowd sang "We Are the Champions." It was awesome- I got a little emotional. It was just really cool to really, truly feel united with the million-plus crowd that was there (how do they know it was that many? No idea).

A couple more fun shots:

So many people! It was so insane!

But getting  home was a pain, to be sure. We should have found a restaurant a few streets over from 16th and killed a couple of hours. We waited for a train for about 45 minutes, and then poor Claire just about got crushed loading in- I had to yell at the people behind us to stop pushing. But, we made it home: EXHAUSTED!

I'm really glad we went. I know we would have both regretted it if we didn't. It really was a lot of fun, and it is something Ben and I will remember forever. And, in 20 years when the Broncos win again, my girls can say, "I was at the 50th SuperBowl parade, too!"