Honolulu City Lights Electric Parade

Sorry for the lack of activity on my blog lately.  I've been spending every spare moment working on photo books of the year for my kids for Christmas and pretty much everything else in my life has been neglected.  I completed and purchased the books today and now I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.

I plan to update the Weekend Events page sometime tomorrow (Thursday).  In the meantime, I'm reposting what I wrote about the Honolulu City Lights electric parade last year.  It's a fun parade with lots of bands, floats, and city vehicles covered in lights.  For my family it's a "not to be missed" holiday event and the 2011 version of the parade is happening this Saturday night.  

Reposted from December 2010

The Honolulu City Lights electric light parade has become an annual tradition for our family and we enjoyed it again this year.  It's always on a Saturday night, probably the first one in December but I'd have to check my calendars from previous years to be sure.  Lots of people go early and enjoy the rides and activities around Honolulu Hale but we prefer to watch the parade as it comes through Chinatown.  It's less crowded there and getting in and out and finding parking is pretty easy.

Our kids enjoyed dancing along to the Christmas music as various bands marched by and they loved getting candy that was passed out by parade participants.  Our son remembered this from last year and asked that we take a bag to put his stash in.  During the parade he decided the candy bag should sit back next to me rather than by him, so the people passing out the candy would think he didn't have any and would be sure to give him some.  As soon as he'd get a piece of candy he'd turn around and toss it to me for safe-keeping in his bag.  Our daughter's technique was to eat as much candy during the parade as she could and she may or may not have eaten candy stolen from the big kids she was sitting with in addition to her own.

There were some nice floats in the parade but my favorites were the utility vehicles bedecked in lights.  Have you ever seen such a nice looking dump truck?

And look at this fancy sewer pumping truck.  

I didn't get a picture of the Handi-Van that was tripped out to look like a low-rider, complete with a spoiler on the back, but it was one of my other favorites.

This parade is happening this Saturday, December 3, 2011 starting at 6pm in downtown Honolulu.  More details to come on the Weekend Events page.