What a great day!  I felt appreciated!  Haley and I got to Pasadena about an hour early today, knowing we had a float to work on, we snuck in early so we wouldn’t be caught in the crowds that show up for the three o’clock shift change.  When you are with the masses, you kind of have to follow through with them.  So we beat the masses.  We went to work on the Lutheran Hour Ministries float, it’s the same place we worked last year.

There is a lot of dry work on this float and a lot of dry work to be done throughout the Rose Palace.  Our float area tends to be where all that is done.  There are tables set up with lots of chairs and the greatest little Fiskar scissors ever.  We had huge crews of people cutting everlasting, and when that ran out, we moved them to yellow straw flowers.  My job became to motivate them and appreciate them, which I do very much.  I demo’d how to cut the flowers and made sure they had the supplies they needed.  It’s very satisfying to work with volunteers, but that is something we do at every event too, so I know how to say thank you.

The tools used on Rose floats are very similar to what you have in your home, but I discovered a new one today that I think I just might have to have.  The Blendtec blender.  It was awesome, and what a workout it is getting at this venue.  Sometimes the flowers are bigger than what you need for the desired effect.  In my case, it was the Everlasting, a shiny white flower that is cut dry off a brownish center.  So I hauled my bucket to the other end of the building, threw in my Everlasting, selected Smoothie and hit the button.  It was a whirlwind of activity, the machine looked like it wanted to take off.  After two Smoothies and a Milkshake, it was
perfect.  Exactly what was needed to fill in the cross on the stained glass gates to heaven.

Haley spent her day gluing split peas to the cross above the gates.  When I cruised by to see how she was doing, she said, “mom, I peed on the cross.”  She makes me laugh.  Last year, we beaned the bible, so peeing on the cross really isn’t much of a stretch.

Real flowers come out on Saturday, it should be a fun day.  For more info on our Rose Parade experience, check out my blog from last year, there were four awesome days, this is the last one.  Trippin’ the Americas