Wednesday, December 8, 2010

101 Reasons Why I Love Florida: Reason #9

















The River Lights Boat Parade is a Christmas event on the Pithlachascotee river in downtown New Port Richey. Aside from the obvious fun of twinkling lights and festive decorations, there is also a good-natured competition. Judges rate each boat on theme, number of lights, overall presentation, crew enthusiasm, etc. The winner of the parade gets to trailer their decorated boat as a float in the following week's street parade.

The picture above is my brother-in-law's boat in last year's parade. He did a Christmas Story movie theme, complete with Ralphie in his pink
bunny pajamas, the Christmas tree on top of the family car, kids in earflap hats, and the infamous leg lamp. The boat won first place!

This year's parade was even better. His boat was decorated as a gingerbread house. There was a 6' tall gingerbread man, a small gingerbread girl, five children dressed as dancing peppermints, and enough Christmas lights to send signals to the space station. Professional pictures are still to come, but here are a couple that I snapped myself.
























2 comments:

Tori Lennox said...

Ilya and Mikael from the Space Station called to say your boat kept them awake. LOL!

Christy said...

We were just trying to say hello! hehe