Pictures from yesterday's Northwest Side Irish Parade

More coverage of yesterday's parade in this post on Page One.

You'd think, as cold as it was, that there'd be no competition for good spots on the parade floats. These kids were taking no chances, however; they had their places staked out on the Sheet Metal Workers Union float early on.

Ditto for these kids promoting the St. Baldrick's Foundation:

Sure, everyone thinks it must be all sorts of glamorous fun to be the Queen of a parade or a member of her court. But maybe not when you have to sit in the back of a convertible a half hour before the parade begins. Especially when the temperature isn't quite 20 degrees.

And you have to keep smiling all the way down the parade route, too.

If it was tough for the parade queen and court, how much tougher must it have been for the Irish dancers? You can't have a St. Patrick's Day parade without at least three schools of Irish dancing -- but Sunday had to have been difficult.

Here are some of the dancers from the Trinity Academy of Irish Dance waiting with their parents before the parade.

And here are some of the dancers and their parents from the Mullane Healy Godley School.

I was still there when the Trinity Dancers came down the street.

I had to leave before any of the marching bands made it down Northwest Highway. This is the Notre Dame and Resurrection Marching Band assembling near Onahan School.

I was there when the St. Patrick's High School Jazz Band came down Northwest Highway.

All parades bog down at times. If delays yesterday seemed pronounced because of the cold, these were merely moments of opportunity for the kids watching the proceedings -- a chance to make sure that not a single piece of candy tossed from those trolley buses or floats went to waste.

The photographer may have succumbed to the chill, but the parade-goers faced the elements with indefatigable good cheer.

But, dear St. Patrick, would it be too much to ask for things to be just a little warmer next year?