January 2, 2017 - Pasadena Rose Parade

Elisa's Daily Scoop
CURRENTLY TRAVELING IN:
​BOCA RATON, FL

Roses, Roses & More Roses

Happy Monday!!
I LOVE Mondays, as you well know.  The first day of the week gets my heart pumping and rearin' to go for the week ahead.

What makes it even better is that I'm still here enjoying the lovely, green, "summery" feel of South Florida.

Me and Kelsey and Dad have had a helluva fun time each morning of my trip - heading over to Starbucks and Einstein Bagels to start the day with some good drink & eats and family time!

Today was no different.  Here I am drinking my beloved daily dose of Hot Chocolate, while Kelsey indulges in her Passion Fruit Iced Tea!

Sounds like Tanya had her share of challenges with her brood for New Year's.  Things were so low key on this end, that there wasn't much to navigate this New Year's Eve or Day.

However, I did get up early yesterday to make a nice dinner - Brown Sugar Chicken (in the crock pot, of course), Roasted potatoes, which were PERFECTLY seasoned by Dad; a string bean salad and corn.  Everything was dee-lish!!!
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CROCK POT GARLIC BROWN SUGAR CHICKEN (c)food.com

I know all of you who have been following me and Tanya for the past few years, are well aware of our LOVE of flowers! 

Why, every chance we get, we are snapping away at flowers!

ME & KELSEY AT THE NY BOTANICAL GARDENS AT THE ORCHID SHOW (2016) (c)travelincousins.com

FLOWERS AT SWISS WOODS B&B IN LITITZ, PA (2015) (c)travelincousins.com

KRAKOW, POLAND (2015) (c)travelincousins.com

BUDAPEST (2015) (c)travelincousins.com

CALIFORNIA (c)travelincousins.com

Today happens to be a special day for ROSE lovers!! It is the 128th Pasadena Tournament of Roses in California.

And guess who will be there, front and center?  You got it - Tanya!! I feel like I've been there for the past few years, as I've enjoyed the photos taken by my dear cousin and her accounts of being at this annual event. 

To kick of 2017,  let's look at our first 17 for '17 with...

17 Fun Facts About the
Rose Parade

1. The Rose Parade, celebrated its 128th year in 2017.

2. It began in 1890, as the members of the Valley Hunt Club decided to promote the city of Pasadena's charm and beautiful weather, as the   “Mediterranean of the West” ​inviting their former East Coast neighbors to a mid-winter holiday celebration.

3. Professor Charles F. Holder at a Club meeting is famous for saying,  "In New York, people are buried in snow, here, our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let's hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise."

4.  The parade has since become America’s New Year Celebration, each year on the first day of the year.

5. Originally, this celebration began with festivities  such as chariot races, jousting, foot races, polo and tug-of-war under the warm California sun.

6. The abundance of fresh flowers, even in the midst of winter, sparked the Valley Hunt Club show off the floral beauty in the city with a parade to precede the competition. Entrants would decorate their carriages with the in-bloom florals.

7. In 1895, the Tournament of Roses Association was formed to take charge of the festival, which had grown too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle.

8. Today, the Rose Parade’s elaborate floats feature high-tech computerized animation and natural materials from around the world.

9. Most are built by professional float building companies and take nearly a year to construct.

10. The Tournament of Roses Association includes more than 935 volunteer members supplying some 80,000 hours of combined manpower. 

11. The Tournament committee members are nicknamed “White Suiters” because of the distinctive white uniform every volunteer wears. 

12. As the years progressed, the festival expanded to include marching bands and motorized floats and games included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations and a race between a camel and an elephant (the elephant won).

13. The town lot in Pasadena was re-named Tournament Park in 1900. 

​14. The Tournament has a “never on a Sunday” deal, struck with local churches, that ensures the parade takes place on January 2 in years when Jan. 1 falls on Sunday.

15. The parade starts at 8 am and usually lasts 2.5 hours.

16. it takes about 20 daisies, 30 roses or 36 marigolds to cover just one square foot. All of the floats together take approximately 18 million flowers.

17. The parade takes place along the 5 1/2 mile route down Colorado Boulevard.  
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Well, my dear peeps, I'm going to take some sun today and work on getting some kind of color before heading back to New York this Friday!!

Have a great one!!

-E
xoxo

Tanya's Daily Scoop
NEXT TRIP DEPARTS IN: 4 DAYS

Roses Everywhere!

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!
Really, who am I fooling - it's not morning.
The streets are dark and the roads are empty - at least until we get close to Pasadena.
And was rain in the forecast...no, but is it raining? Why yes it is.

So here I am at no o'clock in the morning on the 2nd of January, 2017 and while the kids are still snoozing away, tucked warmly in their beds, and the rest of the family are comfortbly sleeping. We (Dave and I) are heading out to see the 128th Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, CA.

Even though it is no o'clock in the morning it is quite surprising as to how many people are out driving on the freeway.     Are they heading out on a long road trip?       Maybe heading to the airport of the vacation of a lifetime!       Or perhaps they are actually just heading home after a really long night... Maybe some are even heading to work and wanting to miss bumper to bumper traffic.
Who knows...   But unless I had something fun planned - I'd most definitely still be in bed.

We are obviously coming off of yesterdays New Year holiday - but for some reason and somehow it just didn't seem like much of a holiday at my house.

I'll come out and say it - it was just kinda weird.

I love New Years Day - always have, and it has always been a BIG holiday for my family. But there was just something different about yesterday.

Something was just off. 

And plans - well plans don't work all that well when there really aren't any plans and there are just "ideas".
We had "planned" to all go out to the movies...well since some of the group still needed to pick up a few things from the grocery store and we needed to take our annual family photos, and schedules just don't work with this group - I mean unless they had a plane to catch or something.

The time line was just not working out - it was apparent to me that this was going to happen.
And so the "plans" just kept changing over and over again. The movie time got bumped and then when we got there (to the theater) the movie was sold out. 

I wanted us to have dinner at a reasonable time, since the idea was that I'd get more than a couple of hours of sleep.
But the day just kept going more and more astray and then we ate even later than ordinary.

All in all it was what it was, but it certainly wasn't my favorite New Years Day. In fact, it was kind of one of my least favorite.

I guess I've got 364 days to give it another try.

But I did enjoy the picture taking!!

But as for today we are going to watch the Tournament of Roses - 

It's a celebration more than a century old – a festival of flowers, music and sports unequaled anywhere else in the world.
America's New Year Celebration, a greeting to the world on the first day of the year (with the exception of when the New Year lands on a Sunday), and a salute to the community spirit and love of pageantry that have thrived in Pasadena for more than 100 years.

Please check out Elisa's column for 17 for fun facts about the Rose Parade and then come back here tomorrow for all of the parade pics that I'll be taking today!!

I'll be signing out for now.

Ciao,
​-T