Video: DeSoto Heritage Festival Children's Parade in Palmetto, Florida

Last year's parade theme was Red, White and Blue. This year's was Fun in the Sun. As always, the kids made their own floats, usually in their elementary school classrooms, and most of them marched in school-based units -- except not everyone in this parade marched.

Some danced, some threw beads, and some just walked or rode. Part of this parade's charm is its casual nature. Someone you know was probably in it. And if you were in it, you probably saw people you knew along the route, and waved or talked to them.

And at the end, in  Palmetto's Sutton Park, there was free Pepsi for everyone -- and a chance to meet the still-unnamed Bradenton Marauders mascot, who made his first public appearance at the DeSoto Heritage Festival Children's Parade in Palmetto, Florida on Good Friday, 2010.