That time we played hooky and went to the Broncos Super Bowl parade

Our house has been full of germs and overdue work projects for the last several weeks and as a result, my blogging time has been severely diminished.  There's also been a lot of football highlight shows to watch and now it's college basketball time and oh yea, kids have homework and house cleaning has to be done from time to time.  So yes, it's been a wee bit busy.  But let's back up to eight days ago when I did something I've never done before and took the kids out of school for a non-illness related reason and we headed to Denver to meet up with Pop-Pop and catch the Broncos Super Bowl parade. 

The Broncos last Super Bowl parade was in 1999. At the time I was 26, swingingly-single, no kiddos and had a boss who said "go to the parade!  You are only young once!" or something like that.  I didn't go to the parade and instead saved my vacation days for something that I don't even remember now.  So in 2016, 40-something me said "who knows when this chance will come again" and I didn't have anything on my calendar that I couldn't miss and the kids hadn't missed too many days from being sick so off we went.  

I'll spare you the gory details about how we almost ended up watching the parade from Pop-pop's living room because traffic was ridiculous and the line for the park-n-ride bus was a good 2-hours long and I started to panic and thought "WHAT HAVE I DONE TAKING THE KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL FOR THIS?"  Suffice it to say, both Pop-Pop and I said more than a few times, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We were determined to make it there and thanks to some kind strangers and their brilliant idea to find another park-n-ride that wasn't a two hour wait and their willingness to patiently explain the other park-n-ride's location to the weird lady from Wyoming, we made it to the parade.  

Even a construction site near the parade site got into the spirit.  Omaha indeed.  

I forgot the fancy zoom on my camera as the owner of Broncos, the Lombardi Trophy and the Super Bowl MVP Von Miller went by on the first firetruck.  We were about 10 people deep from the front of the parade but we could still see everything so clearly.  It was such a fun experience.  

More trophy and defensive player Demarcus Ware and #18 himself.  

Will turned to me later and said "Peyton Manning looked right at us!" 

Wide receivers Emmanual Sanders and Demaryius Thomas.  Lots of smiles.  

A bunch of rowdy defensive stars.  

The Broncos' quarterback of the future unless contract talks break down and some other team grabs him and we end up with RG3 or somebody like that.  

A float full of crazy fans including Broncos Darth Vader and whatever those two fluffy guys are called.  Kids, I won't object if I see you up there someday.  

Look at Pop-pop with that big almost 9-year old on his shoulders.  

So the parade was terrific.  After the floats went by, we had some lunch and then headed back on the bus towards our car and then home.  I'm so glad we did it - who knows when the next Super Bowl parade will be (2017!) and we'll all be able to go.  Sidenote - within a few days, three of the four of us developed bad colds, sinus infections, bronchial junk and a double ear infection but it was still WORTH IT!