This has been one of the more amazing and emotional days of my life - and this post will not do it justice, but I hope I can do it justice very soon...
Laura and I worked on the float yesterday - we had our scheduled time for float decorating... I honestly did more cleaning and sweeping than "decorating" - but, I guess, it's what I'm good at! (Plus, I was able to do a lot more visiting and mingling while sweeping up!!!) Here is a little video of some of what we were doing:
Last night was a wonderful "Stars of Life" Gala - I'll have to post more about that with pictures, but this post would go on forever and I have to get to bed because I have to get up at 4:30am tomorrow! So, today began with a 4am trip to the float barn - I got a little face time, or really butt time (my back was mostly to the camera as I was "working") on the Today show this morning...
Somewhere during our little gathering - we took a picture of the crew that came over at 4am to be there in the event there would be media coverage... Actually, a shuttle astronaut volunteered to take our picture - when I remember his name, I'll post it - to the left is the astronaut with about 20 cameras because we all wanted pictures of the group!!! To the right is the group this morning...
This afternoon was the "dress rehearsal" and float judging - it was the first time the float was fully extended and out in the beautiful sunshine. Besides Laura and Kari - I think this float is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life... That might be because I'm a little emotionally attached to it now. I'll post more pictures of the float - and Laura took about a 6 minuted video of the judging that needs some cutting... During most of the judging - OK, during all of the judging, my eyes were flush with tears - and I wasn't the only one... Most of the other riders found themselves in the same emotional situation and so did many of the audience, and even a few judges...
Until I'm able to put together those videos and pictures - I'll leave you with these two... One is a sweep of some of the floragraphs and the walk of stars - the other is me hauling my growing fanny into my seat on the float:
