Mardi Gras!

Our trip to New Orleans, oh where do I begin? We had an incredible trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I know most people don't think of Mardi Gras as a kid event but for Jeff it's all about spending time with family and enjoying the parades. He wanted the kids to be able to experience all the fun he had growing up and going to Mardi Gras and the kids loved every minute of it! I'm going to try and give a brief synopsis of the trip but It think it's best depicted in all the pictures we took. So here we go...

As most of you know, we drove instead of flying for a couple reasons, number one, buying four airline tickets has gotten incredibly expensive and number two, we knew there would be a lot of stuff to bring back and it wouldn't have been worth transporting it all on an airplane given the baggage fees these days. We left on Thursday afternoon after Allison got out of school and drove five hours to Lake City. I'm not a big fan of being on the road late at night so this was a great stopping point for us. It was about 9pm and we were all tired. The next morning we got up and continued on our journey. We realized we would be passing through Pensacola right around lunch time so we called up Jeff's cousin Suzanne to see if she wanted to meet us for lunch. Luckily she was free and we had a fantastic time catching up with her and checking out downtown Pensacola. She showed us the art gallery where she volunteers as president of a non-profit organization. It's located in a beautifully historical building in downtown Pensacola. The gallery happened to be closed to the public when we were there so the kids had a blast running around in the BIG (almost) empty room. Most of the art was on the walls so there really wasn't anything for them to destroy. It was a great place for them to burn off some of the energy from sitting in a car for two days. Here's a picture I took with my phone of the Allison sitting at Suzanne's desk:
The kids posed for a picture with Suzanne before we had to go on our merry way...
We arrived in New Orleans around 4:30 and went straight to the first parade. Jeff's aunt Louise (who we were staying with while in New Orleans) had joined a group of people who rented a house for the weekend as a "home base". This wasn't were we slept but it was where we hung out in between parades. It was a house that was being renovated so no one was living there. We used it as a place to bring food, hang out, eat, and of course have a clean bathroom to use (definitely beats a port-a-pot!) in between parades. We met up with some of Jeff's family and Uncle Brad also came to hang out (and bring us a ladder to use) before he had to head to work for the evening. When we got there, Jeff attached the seat to ladder and we were ready for the parade! The kids knew exactly what to yell as the floats went by since they had been practicing all week. Once in the seat, the kids began to yell "Throw me something mister!" and boy did they got lots of stuff! Here's a couple pictures from that night:

The next day they were expecting some bad storms so the evening parade was canceled which worked out well for us because we met up with Nana (Jeff's mom) and Stan for lunch at Parkway deli to get our po' boy fix. The kids and I shared a shrimp po' boy while Jeff chowed down on a sloppy roast beef po' boy. We all had big smiles on our faces because our tummies were quite content:

Allison, Nana, and the frog Allison caught in the parade the night before:

After lunch we went back to Nana's apartment and hung out while the rain came pouring down outside. Daniel had fun building with Legos while Allison worked on sewing something special with Nana:

The next day was Sunday and it was a LONG but fun day. All the rain had moved through and the skies were starting to clear. The weather was a bit chilly but we managed to stay warm. Here's a video of the kids getting excited for the parades:



We enjoyed a full day of parades. I forgot to bring my camera so the only pictures I have were taken with my cell phone. I don't think the pictures depict how crowded it was. The parade from Saturday night had been moved to Sunday night so it was much more crowded than usual (according to the locals at least). Thank goodness the kids were high up on the ladder chair or I would have freaked - that's how packed it was. We got to the parade route around 8am and didn't leave until about 12 hours later when Daniel started falling asleep in the ladder chair. This was definitely the most exhausting day but everyone had a great time. Here's a couple pictures from the day - of course we had to start off with beignets!


My favorite beads of the day that Aunt Leslie managed to get for us by yelling "Hey, monkey beads!"

If you drive down St. Charles Ave, pretty much any time of the year, you will see this:
Trees covered in beads! As well as power lines...I could have taken a million pictures off all the floats but I only took a few. Here is one from one of the parades on Sunday:
On Monday, the only parade was at night so we spent the day with Nana and Uncle Brad at City Park. It's so hard not to take a bunch of pictures here because it's so beautiful. Here are just a few:

After City Park, we headed uptown for what else...more parades! But before the parades began, we had to get our beignet fix once again:

Ready for the parades to begin:
A couple more float pics:

The parades aren't just about the floats, it's also about the bands. This is Jeff's favorite part of Mardi Gras - listening to the music play as the bands walk by:

Daniel also loved the music. He told me he really wants to play a drum and horn when he's older but by the end of the day, he's ears were done and this became his common pose:
After a good nights rest, it was our final day in New Orleans - Mardi Gras! We got up early and headed down to the parade route. What was the first thing we did though??? Of course, get more beignets! (Did we eat healthy or what??). I love how cute Daniel looks with powdered sugar all over him and his raincoat:
Allison and Aunt Louise (aka Aunt Weezie):

The big part about Tuesday that Jeff kept trying to explain to me ahead of time is that almost everyone wears costumes. I realized how true that was when we went out to the parade route. Here's a few pics of what we saw:



We had a hard time coming up with a costume but Jeff decided that we should all wear wigs, more specifically he would wear red, I would wear blue and the kids would wear purple. Get it? Red + blue = purple.
Here's Daniel before he was willing to put on the wig (so we had to plop it on his head for a quick picture):
And here he is after he got used to the idea of wearing the wig:


Around 1pm we were ready to head out and start our trip home. About five minutes after we got into the car and looked in the back seat and saw this:
Yes, I think we sufficiently managed to wear the poor kid out. After five days of parades, he was DONE! We made it home safely the next day and unloaded all of our loot:
Yes, that is A LOT of crap! But we had so much fun catching it all. I've started the process of giving away beads and some of the stuffed animals. Allison and Daniel both took beads to school for all of their classmates and I've given some to my friends. Not sure what we are going to do with the rest of it. We just managed to get rid of the bin full of beads that Jeff and I collected when we went to Mardi Gras is 2002. So if you'd like some beads, give me a ring, I think I can spare a few...