Chinese New Year Parade - DC

We went to DC's Chinese New Years Parade today. It was Ally's first and we're glad we got a chance to take her. The weather this time of year is always a factor but today it was rather mild for February. We got there at the tail end of the parade. That's Ally trying to pull off my toupee.

You can't have Chinese New Years without dragons:










And you can't do anything in DC without Mayor Anthony Williams showing up:

If there's a guy from the hazmat team pulling something out of a garbage can, you know something good is about to happen. He's pulling a string of about a million firecrackers out of that can and connecting one end to a crane hook. The crane then pulls the string about four stories into the air.

Who better to light the string than hizzoner, The Mayor:

Once the crackers started going off, the crane slowly lowered it so that the exploding end stayed on the ground. The dragons proceeded to dance around the firecrackers:

Overall, we had a pretty good time and saw a lot of other families with adopted daughters from China. I was worried Ally would be afraid of the firecrackers, since we were so close, but that wasn't the case. I wish we could have stayed and done some shopping, but there was some football game on later so... maybe another day.