2013 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox Parade

The unexpected happened this year.  The Red Sox, who had a terrible, no good, awful year in 2012 with a record of 69-93, losing 12 out of their last 13 and firing their manager, won the 2013 World Series, beating the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games.  Given that they went 86 years without a World Series win from 1918 to 2004, we thought it would be fun (read: a chance we may never get again) to take the kids into Boston to see the parade.  It was a beautiful fall day- in fact, it was actually warm!

Here are the kids in front of the infamous Citgo sign.

Some guy saw us taking pictures of the kids and offered to take our family picture, which became our Christmas card!

We went over to the corner of Ipswich and Boylston near Fenway for the parade.  This is pretty much the same spot Todd and I were at during the 2007 parade, but this time we were across Boylston Street.  There were tons of people down there, but it wasn't a madhouse or anything.

The first duck boat always has the World Series trophy in it!  

 

Awww, Pedey!  One of the "themes" this year was "Fear the Beard" so most of the players still had their beards. I was actually going to write "playoff beards" but between Gomes, David Ross and some others, they had pretty much been growing them since spring training.  Anytime someone hit a homerun, other players would tug on their beard when they got back to the dugout.  Ouch.

Former Auburn baseball catcher David Ross - aka: The Wolf (for his streaked beard) and Will Middlebrooks behind him.  He was at Auburn when I was there (even though he left to be a Gator).  We still love him anyway, and if someone says, "War Eagle" to him- he always responds the proper way!

Natalie was so excited to see Big Papi.  All of the boys in her school have been talking about him.  Here he is with his World Series MVP trophy, holding out 3 fingers for the three World Series' he's won with the Red Sox.  Simply awesome.

One of the last floats was Koji and Junichi and their translator.  Koji was the ALCS MVP (he's the Sox closer after Andrew Bailey got hurt.  As you can see Andrew Bailey is on this float, although he's facing the other side!)

If you've ever been to a World Series parade, they're pretty short (maybe 20 minutes for the parade itself).  So it was over pretty quick and before you knew it, we were heading back to the green line.  I like this picture that Todd snapped of Grant and I walking down Yawkey Way.  Long shadows in November, but a warm day since I have my sleeves rolled up!

After we took the Green Line back to Woodland (in Newton), we drove to Wellesley to get lunch (or breakfast, as the kids and Todd had) at Maugus.  On our way home at one point, the kids were strangely quiet.  I turned around to find this!