We had the opportunity to go to New Orleans, Louisiana for 5 days for a mini vacation and to attend the Shaklee Convention. It was Parker's first airplane ride and the first time to the state of Louisiana for Brooks and I. (I have this goal to visit 50 states, so I was pretty excited to check this one off, only 13 more to go, anybody have a reason to visit North Dakota?).
Parker was an angel on the plane (he slept most of the time). The picture below is of him at the airport in New Orleans, we got there really late at night. Poor thing.
We stayed right on the edge of the French Quarter and did a little sightseeing. Our first adventure was walking around the French Quarter. We started off with a visit to Cafe Du Monde, which is a famous place to get Beignets (French donuts). Essentially they are scones with a ton of powder sugar on top, pretty good.
We then spent some time and money at the French Market, and headed back to our hotel via the famous Bourbon Street (don't care to walk again on it). The architecture of some of the buildings was cool, but the bars and "other types of clubs" were not so cool, I wouldn't want to be there at night, yikes.
We spent most of our time at the Shaklee convention, attending meetings and events. One event we attended was the Masters Masquerade Ball at the Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art. We found our masks when we went to the French Market. Brooks stood out pretty good with his beak.
New Orleans is a colorful place. We happened to be there during the "red dress" run, didn't seem to matter what gender you were, the point was to run in a red dress from bar to bar. We saw a lot of red...yikes; they said it was for charity. It was HOT and Humid, I don't know how people survive, and then the buildings almost freeze you to death. I guess that is better than the humidity. Our last sightseeing adventure was riding the St Charles Street Car, which took us through the Garden District and past Loyola and Tulane University, plus some lavish southern mansions. It must be the same street the Mardi Gras Parade goes down, because many of the trees still have beads hanging from them, some looked like Christmas trees, there were so many beads.
We had a great time and it was fun to get away for a few days. Here is one last picture of Parker, he did really good in his little stroller, lots of people came up to him and he smiled for everybody.
Well after many months and a lot of hard work, mostly painting, Parker's nursery is finally done. He got to move in on Tuesday, August 12 and I think he likes it. The change from bassinet to crib didn't affect his sleeping through the night, thank goodness. Although it has affected mine as I continue to check on him periodically throughout the night, hopefully I will get used to him being in a different room too.
