Our second honeymoon -- New Orleans!

Yesterday, we got back from our trip to Louisiana. We originally planned to go on a 4 day, 5 night cruise to Cozumel and Progreso, but the fog came out and delayed a day of our cruise. This meant that we would miss one of our ports. Sharon and I both decided that if we went on the cruise anyway, we would probably be party poopers, always thinking about the disappointment of not getting to go see the ruins on the Yucatan. Knowing this about ourselves, we got a refund on the cruise and made a last minute trip to New Orleans.

It was a wonderful, wonderful trip. The spontaneity of it was fun, and being able to explore a new place together and learn about a culture rather foreign to both of us was a blast. By serendipity we caught the head of Mardi Gras season and saw some pretty spectacular parades. That was something that I never planned on doing, and realistically we will never do it again. Best of all, of course, was getting to do it all with just me and Sharon. Four full days of alone time without the kids was a marvelous, liberating, refreshing thing. We are so grateful to Mom for making it happen!! What a great gift to us. She was a champion and did a wonderful job taking care of the kids, with a great attitude. I'm glad the kids got to spend that kind of quality time with her.

We did a lot of things... it might be easier to share an album on facebook or something, but I like the blog because it's more of a journal and feels more permanent. So here's a lot of photos.

The parades we saw:

Lots and lots of floats like this. About 1.5 hours worth for each parade, and we saw 2 parades in one night. Every float throws beads and little toys out

Our massive haul. We stopped collecting beads because we couldn't carry anymore!

They say you go to New Orleans to eat, and I can see why. Everything we had was super tasty. Some of the great food we ate:

All sorts of gumbo, crawfish salad

Crawfish platter

Scenery at a restaurant

Alligator and crawfish cheesecake

My favorite store in the French Quarter. They had 60+ kinds of hot sauce to try with chips.

Famous beignets at Cafe du Monde. This place is open 24 hours, we ate them around 10:00 PM after the first parade

These grilled oysters were amazing. An expensive splurge, but worth it.

Famous Po Boy sandwiches at Johnny's Po Boys

Other sites in New Orleans:

Lots of dancing and live music

Sharon fell in love with hats at a hat store. Too bad they average $80 each. She looked great in all of them!

Riding the street cars was a lot of fun

Most of the houses visible from street cars were interesting, like this one

Foggy Mississippi River

Really fun cemetery tour in the French Quarter of New Orleans:

This is a tomb that people who practiec voodoo worship at

Tombs are above ground here because of the water table. They put bodies in for a year and the hot weather sort of cremates them. Notice how many people were buried in this above ground tomb!

Sinking tombs

This pyramid is where Nicholas Cage is going to be buried

We went out on a swamp tour an hour away from New Orleans, which was a blast.

It was a bit cold and the big gators weren't out yet, but we saw some little ones!

A turtle that the guides were fixing up. He had a big hole in his shell.

Raccoons were everywhere.

Vultures were everywhere, too. I think it had something to do with the following video:

We stopped by Lafayette "Cajun country" on the way home and enjoyed a historical cultural center as well as a beautiful cathedral. The cultural center had several original homes from the 1820's, about 10 replicas, and several volunteers doing crafts inside.

An original 1800's, 2 bedroom house for a family of 10-16.

I will not speak french in the classroom or on school grounds

1920 Singer machine was working great

Random fog machine in a science exhibit

Pulling myself across the ferry

Spinning cotton! Both of us had no idea how that worked, so this was fun

St John's Cathedral. I lost my tablet in this place without knowing it and someone gave it back before I knew I lost it. People are nice. The Cathedral was very impressive. Built early 1800

Grandma said the boys didn't miss us too much while we were gone, which is a testament that they had fun with her. Peter crawled 2 or 3 steps before we left, and by the time we got home he was all out. This is a picture Mom sent us while we were gone.

He had the muscles but didn't know what to do!

By the time we got home, he was doing this:


Sharing the Mardi Gras loot with the kids and having fun with grandma before she left:

Grandma showing off her baby taking care of skills

Sharon managed to snag this turtle during a parade and was ecstatic, because Enoch is obsessed with them.

Now it's time for the real world again... I start OBGYN tomorrow.