"Girl Day" in Wichita

Today started in a bittersweet sort of way - I took Sonia, Claire and Tessa to the airport for their trip home. Sonia has been here since last Thursday, and we've spent several hours together most of the past several days.  There are few people in the world with whom I can fall into an effortless comfortable relationship, and Sonia is truly a friend of my heart. I was so glad to be the person to drive her and her girls to the airport, since it gave me some additional time with her, and some quality conversational time at that. But I was so sad that they were leaving; I haven't had NEARLY enough catch-up time. For whatever reason, being with Sonia lets me drop all of the external responsibilities and roles that I've taken on as an adult here in my community, and allows me to be my most true self.  It's been so reassuring and fulfilling to get back to what's most essential.
At any rate, after I pulled over in the parking lot and had a little cry, Lauren and I headed into Wichita proper to explore a little. We started with Hatman Jack's, as a surprise to Lauren. She's been dreaming of a "real" cowgirl hat for almost a year, and what better place to find one than Hatman Jack's?  We tried on dozens of hats - fascinators, cowgirl hats, bowlers, derbies, top hats... Lauren's favorite was a steampunk-themed leather top hat with a big metal gear on the front.
After that, we went down the block to Twist, a yarn & knitting store. The proprietor was fantastic and spent quite a lot of time helping Lauren, talking to her about knitting for beginners, recommending websites and other resources, and helping her choose some new yarn. (Tonight, Lauren finished her first knitting project - an afghan for the dollhouse!)
After that, we went to the Old Tasty Mill for lunch. It's in Old Town on Douglas, and is worth the wait in line! Lauren had a cheese quesadilla and I had pork verde monterrey - it was amazing!
After eating, we headed to Hannah Bananas to look for some new school clothes. Jill and the kiddos came to meet us there, and we found a few cute things! I love, love, love my adorable nieces and nephew!
We then went to The Donut Whole, and that might be a transformative experience for me - they are a tiny, quirky shop that has about 30 or more different flavors of donuts each day. They are well known for their maple bacon donuts, but they were out by the time we got there. There were 6 of us, and we got 12 donuts and shared bites - my favorites were Caramel Sea Salt, Citrus Cherry, and Double Cinnamon.  We stayed and taught the kids to play pinball and enjoyed the atmosphere, until the littlest one frustrated herself playing games and the crying began.  :)
Lauren and I headed to one last destination - Trends, a consignment store that specializes in teen clothing. That was a fun find for us, and we stayed until they closed - we'll be going back!
We are relaxing now, eating some cheese & crackers instead of "real dinner", since I'm still full of donuts, and watching the Olympics.
I feel so blessed that my life includes my amazing daughter, who I LOVE spending time with and who still likes to spend time with me, my sister & nieces & nephew that I can't wait to see again, a best friend who truly brings out the best in me and who helps me remember the blessing of opening your heart to another person, and a husband that I can't wait to come home to each day.

Kingdom of the Mentally Unstable

One of the joys of being a teacher's child is that when all of the other students are gone, you often gain some freedom in terms of roaming the school. Lauren and the J girls spent the Friday after school was officially out at school while their mother and I (and the other teachers) worked. They mostly entertained themselves in our classrooms, but by mid-afternoon had begged to go play on the stage in the gym. They were practicing a play they had written and eventually came to get Jenn & I to be the audience. It was a long, drawn-out play with the girls each having multiple parts - Lauren as narrator, the girls as queens, kings, princesses, ninjas, etc. Eventually, I was rushing them along, since I had HOURS of work left to do, and the gym was hot. I was glad that I'd stayed, however, when it got to the part where Lauren explained that in the land of the play, they all celebrated birthdays with "cake and vodka", and then a bit later when she described the kingdom as "the land of the mentally unstable, obviously". :) Yeah, that's my kid.

Lately

So I have a couple of things that have happened lately that I don't want to forget about, so I'm "writing them down" here!
This past Wednesday in library, my kiddos were following me around during check-out time, asking me to recommend books and then clamoring to borrow them next. One of my students, Harlea, told me how much she loves reading now, even though she didn't love reading before this year. She said that last year she only read enough to finish her Sunflower Reader, but that this year, she loves to read because I love to read.
Makes my heart happy!

The other evening, Lauren said two things in the space of an hour that really illustrate what sort of kiddo she is:
*We went for a walk after dinner. It was dusk, and we walked past Jim's shop, which has a huge puddle beside it. Lauren said, "Is it just me, or is that a malevolent-looking puddle? Maybe I've been reading too many scary books lately..."
*When we got home, we sat down to watch "The Tooth Fairy 2". When the movie started, Lauren said, "So you're saying that I get to watch Larry the Cable Guy, in a pink tutu?? Rock. On."
Oh, yeah, that's my kind of kid!

Photos of my recent maps

The week before last included Hays, Liberal, Buhler and Newton!

Last week's traveling - Emporia, Paola, LaCygne

KTOY trip to Topeka to speak at the Capitol 1/17/2012

Tonight (it's Tuesday evening) I'm in Emporia, after spending the past three days in Topeka, doing KTOY activities. I've been in Topeka since Sunday morning, training with the rest of the KTOY team, getting ready for today. We all got to stay in ghte Capitol Plaza Hotel, which was swanky and beautiful.
Sunday we met with 3 principals from around the state and then with Commissioner Dale Dennis to talk about current issues in education. Then our team, along with Sherry and Kathy, went out for dinner at Paisano's Ristorante - and I had the most amazing salmon with cheese tortellini in a cream sauce - wow!
Monday we started bright & early, meeting with Dr. DeBacker and Deputy Neuenswander, and then with 2 superintendents. We got some more input about the current issues in education, as well as some prep for what types of questions the legislators might have for us. We spent the afternoons on both days practicing our speeches for the legislators, with feedback from the group on making our speeches as compelling and fluid as possible, while staying within our 2-minute limit! Monday night our group chose to go to The Blind Tiger for dinner, which was a really fun atmosphere. It's a microbrewery & restaurant in an interesting old building. The inside has 3 levels of seating areas, as well as big metal tanks for brewing. They also brew their own root beer. I almost bought Lauren a big jug of root beer as a souvenir! I had chicken & noodles over mashed potatoes for dinner; my friends said that the chicken and BBQ and homemade potato chips were delicious!
Today we headed for the Docking Building, across from the Capitol. The Capitol Building is undergoing renovations, and so the House of Representatives is meeting in the Docking Building for now. We met with the House of Representatives Education Committee in a meeting room. There were about 15 representatives present, and they were polite and attentive. After we each gave our speeches, they spent about an hour or so asking us questions about education, the budget, assessments, passing/failing students, raising scores, the time and money that teacher spend in the classrooms, and what advice we have for legislators.
It was interesting to spend some time visiting with the representatives after the session was over. I'll definitely be more compelled to write/email my representatives - these people were truly interested in hearing what we have to say and in making responsible choices. The head of the committee was taken with the fact that I call my class "kiddos". :) I enjoyed speaking with Representative Loganbill, who is also a Bethel grad, and another representative who is also a Vera Bradley fan (we compared purses!).
After meeting with the House Representatives, Sherry and Kathy took us for lunch at the Celtic Fox, near the Capitol Building. It is a pub with AMAZING food! I had an Irish chicken stew and a roast beef & cheddar sandwich. Much of the food and all of the decor had an Irish theme - bagpipes on the wall, enormous "pints" hanging from the ceiling, etc.
After lunch, we headed to the Capitol Building. We had some time before our first appointment, so we did some walking around, taking photos, buying souvenirs, etc. We all got postcards for our classes. Then we took turns sitting in Governor Brownback's chair behind his desk and taking our photos (he wasn't in his office today!) :)
We met with the Senate Education Committee next, in a meeting room. This was a smaller committee than in the morning. They were very positive and involved. Senator Shodorf was our sponsor for the day, and she was very encouraging and supportive. They asked great questions for us, mostly regarding the same topics as in the House.
Then they walked us to the Senate chamber for the 2:30 - 3:30 session. It was the most beautiful room! I've never seen a Senate meeting before and the process was very interesting to me - the wooden gavel that is banged after every decision, the repetitive calling of roll for voting, the pages, the Senators' freedom of movement/talking during the session - very interesting. They passed a resolution honoring our team and each of us by name.
After that, we stayed until the end of their session and then visited with the few senators that hung around. Some of our team's senators came over to congratulate them and/or take photos together, etc.
Then we piled back into the van and headed for the hotel. Most people headed home, and a couple stayed at the Plaza. I headed for Emporia. I'm thinking now that perhaps I should have stayed at the Plaza - my room there was pretty luxurious, and this one seems shabby by contrast. However, this way I don't have far to drive in the morning, which is a blessing for me!
Carla

Breaking Paths

So Lauren had an amazing first day of 5th grade. She really likes her teacher, thinks that her class will be okay, and is excited about the things that they will be learning. It's such a weight off of my shoulders to get her past the hurdle of apprehension that she's been struggling with. It's one thing to intellectually know that she'll bounce right back and lose the apprehension once she's experienced it a bit. But in the midst of her worrying, it has a tendency to make me worry as well. Today was very reassuring. :)

Ruminations

Okay, if I do say so myself, I have been a running rock star lately, getting in around 3 miles most days. I set a new personal record for myself tonight, running a mile in 11:18. Which I know is not earth-shattering, but feels like a big deal to me. And I ran the whole darn thing, which is also a big deal to me, since I'm working hard to move from interval running to include some longer distance running.
Tomorrow is the first day of school. Even though the kids will be walking through the doors in 7 1/2 hours, it still doesn't quite feel real to me.
Lauren is having a really hard time with it this year - lots of tears and mulling it over. She's struggling with the concept of being older than my students for the first time. For some reason, being a 5th grader seems very significant to her, and makes her think about moving on to middle school, which makes her think about high school, which makes her think about college and moving away and turning into a grown-up. Which makes her cry. At bedtime. And sometimes other times as well. My poor cognizant, internalizing analyzer.

Running, part 2

Okay, so I sucked it up and ran last night - got my 3.4 miles in! On Mom's treadmill, since it was 98 degrees when we walked home from her house at 10:30 last night. I guess late-night indoor running might be the plan for a while...

Running

Saturday night, I ran 3.5 miles on Mom's treadmill, testing out my new running shoes inside, so that I didn't mark up the soles in case I wanted to return them.
On Sunday (yesterday) morning, I got up and ran 3 miles at the track, as well as doing 2 sets of the bleacher steps.
This morning, I got up and it was already 85 degrees. It is just too darn hot to go outside and run right now. The forecast is for 109 today and 111 tomorrow.
Not doing much for my "I'm going to run 3 miles every day this week" plan.

This summer's temperatures are rapidly diminishing any affection I hold for Kansas.

Books

Reading is the delight of my summer. If I was utilizing more common sense, I would devise and gain a job where I got paid to read books of my choosing - don't they always say you should find a job you truly love, and then you'll always be happy to go to work? So my most peaceful moments of the summer are spent on my front porch, sprawled in a porch chair, reading. Or at the pool, taking occasional dips in the water to cool off and keeping on eye on where exactly Lauren is in the pool. I subscribe to the "I feel no pressure to read quality literature in the summer" theory. I've read Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovitch, and the latest book in the Charlaine Harris series (the one the True Blood show is based on). I've reread some of the Harry Potter books, and the latest James Pattersons. I've read a bunch of light reading "girly" books that honestly all kind of blur together - Kristin Hannah and Jennifer Crusie, etc. But I've read 3 that stick out for me: Moon Over Manifest, Handle With Care, and A Reliable Wife.
Moon Over Manifest is by Clare Vanderpool. She is a Wichita, KS author, and she just won the Newberry award for this book. It is actually a YA book, set in KS, with details that appealed to me because they were so authentic. I was hoping to be able to read this book aloud to my class, but I think it will be over their heads. However, for Kansans in particular, this was a worthwhile read. Set during the Depression, the main character, a young girl, is shipped by her drifter father to his hometown, to be taken care of by an old friend, while her father travels and looks for work. The story tells about her searching into the past of the town, looking for clues about her father.
Handle With Care is about a young girl born with brittle bone disease. It's told from her mother, father, and older sister's points of view, all directed to her. Her mom ends up suing her obstetrician, on the grounds that she would have aborted her daughter had the disease been diagnosed earlier. The mom is doing this expressly for the purpose of gaining money to be able to care for her daughter. The father fights on the other side of the lawsuit. It was kind of heart-wrenching for me to read as a mom - how far you'd go to provide for your children, and how your choices ripple out to affect others.
A Reliable Wife is the best-written book I've read in ages. It is set in the early 1800s in rural Wisconsin. A man who basically owns a town - his company employs 95% of the population there - puts an ad in an East-coast newspaper advertising for a wife. A woman answers his ad, they get to know each other through letters, she comes to visit to see if they are compatible. However, this book slowly unfolds and becomes a rich and detailed and unforgettable story. It is fairly risque, but has incredible writing - I had to stop reading it at the pool, because I would forget to check to see if Lauren was all right.

Kansas City, Day 2

We are back at home-sweet-home...by 10:00 p.m. This morning we slept late, then headed out for Fritz's for breakfast (the restaurant with the train that runs along the ceiling and delivers your food). But then we realized that they didn't open until 10:30, and that they were in an area where we'd have to pay to park, etc. - so we headed for McDonald's instead. :) Then we went to the WWI Museum - Liberty Memorial Museum, which was amazing. It was really informative, but the best part for me was the small personal belongings of soldiers that made me feel like I kind of knew some of them - it was very emotional in some parts. I think that every high school student should go through that museum. I'm sure that I learned some of that information before...
We went to the top of Liberty Tower, which is an elevator ride up 214 feet, and then a climb of 45 steps. The viewing tower had a tall wall, about as tall as Lauren. Lauren was really nervous about going up, but was okay once we were up there. The view was AMAZING - we could see way beyond the city limits, and I got some amazing pictures. The downtown skyline was beautiful.
After the museum, we went to an Italian diner called Bella Napoli's for lunch. I'd read online that it was a great authentic neighborhood deli. What I didn't realize was that everything was going to be in Italian. So it was kind of an experience... They have three doors, but you can only walk in the middle one, which opens into a deli/meat & cheese counter, with a big board behind it with Italian writing. It opened into one side that had booths and another side that was a coffee bar. We had wonderful, wonderful food - Lauren had an Americano sandwich (fresh deli meat and homemade rolls), and Stuart and I had pasta. I had a meatball panini and it was YUM! However, I couldn't even finish half of it, and Stuart and I both had rigatoni, too. We'll be going back the next time we're in KC - there were about 15 more things that I want to try.
After we ate, we went to the Miniatures Museum, but the docent told us that they closed in 30 minutes. So we drove by the Nelson Adkins Museum, and then headed out to Cabella's. We could spend an unreasonable amount of time browsing around in Cabella's. The best part, for me, was watching Lauren play a target shooting game upstairs and SHE ROCKED! I had no idea she was so good at that - it was amazing to watch her really excel at something unexpected!

Stuart just turned the television on, and the show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" is on. I'd forgotten how much I love this show! It used to be my favorite television show!

Royals Game, KC, July 7, 2011

We are in our hotel room, having just returned from a Royals game. We have stolen Stuart away for the weekend as our Fathers' Day gift - a Royals game, the WWI museum, eating at Fritz's, etc. Lauren and I have never been to any big baseball game before, and we had a blast. Even though the weather has been 100 degrees or hotter every day for the last two weeks, today was suddenly much cooler - it was only around 80 degrees and overcast, so it was pleasant to be outside. The Royals lost 3-1, but the game was way more fun to watch than I would have guessed. The most memorable thing is that we almost got hit by a foul ball - it hit the lady sitting behind me, and I heard it whizz in between my head and Lauren's head. It was truly one of those slow-motion-reaction moments - I could see it coming, couldn't decide if it was going to hit us or not, I could see Stuart putting his hands up to grab for it. I thought he had caught it, because it didn't hit us, and then I realized that it hit the lady behind us. Scary...I can't imagine what would have happened if it had hit Lauren, with a 95-mile-an-hour pitch, and I don't even know what it's going once it's been hit. We saw 2 players break their bats when they hit, we saw a home run, and one that was *almost* a home run (I thought it was, but I was wrong!), and watched the Detroit pitcher playing mind games. We got ice cream while we walked around during the 5th inning, Lauren got a light blue Royals shirt, we got to watch Sluggerrr (the lion mascot) dance around on top of the dugout, the Royals cheerleader girls dance and swing towels around, and listen to the girls behind us cheer their heads off. As well as a man in the top balcony who kept yelling "Let's go, Royals..." to try to get the crowd to start that chant about 200 times. With very poor results. It was interesting to see the vendors - Lauren got blue cotton candy first thing.
I had so much fun, and I'd really like to go again.
Tomorrow we are going to go to Fritz's for breakfast, I think, and then the WWI museum, and then somewhere else. Lauren and I made a list of about 6 or 8 things in the area that we think Stuart might like, and so we'll pick something fun - the Truman Museum, the Miniatures Museum, the Money Museum, Spring Cave park, the fountains at some big mall, etc.

June 25, 2011

I'm not sure about why this is, but for some reason in the summer, when I say "going to the pool", my head decides that it counts as exercise. Like, when I am totally my exercise for the week in my head, I'm thinking, "Well, I went to the pool on Wednesday and Friday." Which would be fabulous if I actually DID any exercise whatsoever when I was at the pool. I do not. I dip in the water a few times, pull my kiddo on a few laps to practice her swimming strokes, and then lay on my lounge chair and read and talk. Seriously, the most strenuous thing I do is raise my arms over my head to hold my book there so that it blocks the sun.
However, I've still been running some, and going to Zumba two or three times a week, so I'm not being a total slacker.
I'm working on cleaning my house, and I set a goal for myself yesterday. I had really been thinking that at some point we would move, that we wouldn't live in this little house forever. But the longer that we live here, the more I think that we're stuck here. So, I decided that if I get the house REALLY clean (which is always my summer goal, but often gets shoved aside in favor of swimming and getting sno-cones and reading books), like lemon-oil-polish the wood sort of clean, then I am going to reward myself by painting the laundry room. Which seems not-so-rewarding in print, but which I am actually really motivated by. My laundry room is currently less than inspiring to me, and I want to paint it a lovely rich teal color, with chocolate accents. That would require tearing off old wallpaper first, but I'm really fairly motivated to do this. And while I'm at it, I think I'm going to also paint the UGLY stairs leading from the laundry room to the basement. I saw a photo of stairs painted to look as if they had a runner down the middle of them - I'm thinking that I could do that in the teal, as well. If I'm going to stay in this house, I might as well do some of the renovations that I've been delaying, thinking that we'd just move away...
Okay, off to Zumba it is. This morning is the weekly "Mom & Me" class, so L gets to dance, too! :)
Then I think that we'll go do the once-a-week run into Hutchinson - buy groceries, run errands, etc. And I think that we might get to watch Ella for the afternoon today. She's the sweetest little punkin'...and I get to give her back at the end of the day, so I don't lose any sleep over her!

Road Trip to See Great-Grandma 6/20/11

We just got home from a 2-day trip to visit Great-grandma Fast in Beatrice. Jill and I and our kids all drove together in her van. It has been 48 hours filled with:
*"Pete and Repeat were in a boat. Pete jumped out. Who was left?" asked over and over and over...in a moving vehicle, with no escape hatch.
*M and G singing their versions of Taylor Swift songs, loudly, sometimes with dance motions.
*C saying:"Don't say the woood disgusting. It makes Aunt Ca-wa have da sad face."
*"It's my turn to push the elevator button! No, you did it last time! Well, you got to do it twice one time! No, it's not your turn!" Repeat same scenario with "use the room key card" inserted rather than "the elevator button".
*C singing, "I love you so much. I love you so much!" over and over. I wish I could have gotten it on video. It was ADORABLE!
*Taking the kids geocaching at Homestead National Monument - the first time that M and G have gone geocaching.
*Touring the farm house. This was a super sad experience for me, to see how degraded the farm is. Ceilings fallen in, dead animals inside, all windows broken out, etc.
*Getting to see my uncle Vern. Isn't it nice when you LIKE your relatives? It always makes me sad that we don't live closer to him.
*Trying to coerce 4 children into falling asleep at remotely the same time.
*Keeping L calm in the face of the approaching storm on Monday night. The park ranger told us that we were in a tornado watch and that we'd be getting rain and hail. Jill & I really wanted to stop and see Grandpa's headstone before heading back to town. The kids were interested, but spooked by the ominous black clouds. My kid was beyond spooked. Like "I'm not getting out of the van" spooked.

Summer Lessons

So, that expression about how experience is the best teacher? True indeed.

Summer lesson #1: Buy new sunscreen every summer. And while you're at it, check the expiration date (not all brands have one, though). If you use last summer's sunscreen, it might not be very effective any more. And if you go to the pool for the first time, and take a group of other people's children with you, you'll ALL get sunburned.

Summer lesson #2: If you go to Grandpa & Grandma's pond and walk around in the grass by the pond, you should take a shower when you get home, NO MATTER HOW LATE IT IS. Really. If you don't, you'll have about 100 chigger bites covering your bra and underwear areas by the next morning. And if you are a kid, and spent HOURS by the pond transferring tadpoles and catfish from one rapidly shrinking puddle to another, you should be particularly vigilant about the showering thing. Because you'll have about 200 chigger bites, and be all swollen and red and everything will itch and hurt. We should buy stock in Benadryl and After-Bite.

More Unconnected Details about Louisiana Trip

*In Louisiana, they don't divide up the state into counties - they are divided into parishes.

*Louisiana has a few "sections", at least as they are touted to tourists. We spent time in the plantation area and in the swamp area.

*When we visited the San Fransisco Plantation, Lauren's favorite thing was the slave quarters. But her second favorite thing was the boudoir in the "big house". The guide explained to us that the literal translation of "boudoir" is "pouting room" and that it was used for a woman to go into when she was mad at her husband, and he couldn't come in. Also, it was used for kids in time-out. And for women when they were pregnant, if unexpected company came over, and for her to give birth in, and then stay in (with the baby) for two months after. At that time, not much was known about diseases/medicines, so seclusion was used for protection.

*In New Orleans, we visited the Blue Dog gallery. The artist who created Blue Dog is from New Orleans, so there's a big interesting gallery, which was an unexpected perk for us. We also saw an enormous Blue Dog statue in a traffic median in Metairie later.

*On Wednesday, our last morning in New Orleans, we went to a place called Morning Call and had beignets and cafe au lait for breakfast. Well, Stuart had cafe au lait, and Lauren & I had hot chocolate. Beignet are like fried dough squares, and you shake powdered sugar over them and eat them while they're hot. Yummm.

*Lauren got to climb a 300-year-old oak tree at the Audubon Zoo. I've never seen any tree that big and sprawling before, and some of its limbs were so gnarled and twisted that they touched the ground.

*Driving home was like driving backward through the seasons - we left summer behind in Louisiana, and arrived back in winter - it was 30 degrees when we got home last night! Louisiana was so lush and green and pleasant to be outdoors all day. As we drove, the greenery changed over into evergreens for part of Texas, then thick trees, then eventually in Oklahoma, into landscape that looked like Kansas (except with red soil, of course!)
Lauren at the Blue Dog art gallery

Lauren with an alligator at the airboat tour building

One of the balconies (called galleries) on Bourbon Street, still decorated for Mardi Gras. We walked down Bourbon Street for several blocks, until the advertisements and shop owners became a little too risque for little-girl-eyes.

Lauren watching the little alligators, which Stevie had just let her feed with big marshmallows.

All the rest

I have approximately a million other details that I want to share - I think I'm going to try to do this in a few shorter posts, rather than one gargantuan one.
I forgot to share about the City Diner, the diner that was in the parking lot of our hotel in New Orleans (well, technically, in a "suburb" of New Orleans called Metairie). The City Diner has the best food, and every single thing we ate there was bigger than my head. Sandwiches, hash browns, pancakes, everything. On Tuesday, we ate breakfast there, and Lauren got a chocolate chip pancake. She was trying to decide whether to have 1 or 2 pancakes, the waitress said, "They're pretty big - maybe you should just get one first, and then see."

That's the biggest pancake I've ever seen in my entire life. We think that we should nominate their diner for the show "Man Vs. Food", because you can order the pancakes in stacks of 1,3, or 5. We all ate Lauren's pancake, and we didn't even eat half of it. And it was delicious, probably the best pancake I've ever eaten.
We were sitting in a booth near the door, and people would walk in, and then do a full-body double-take when they saw her pancake.
Tuesday was the day we went to the cemeteries. One of my very favorite tombs had a beautiful blue stained glass window in the back of it, and a statue of a forlorn angel who has flung herself over a table/stone, with the blue light falling on her. It was heartbreaking. The tombs are like small houses, with ornate wrought-iron gates and urns full of flowers/plants, and statues and wreaths and ribbons. They were beautifully well-kept, obviously a priority to many families. Some of them had ornate designs of multi-colored marble and stone in front of them, made to look like carpets. And in some of the areas, the oldest areas, the facades were crumbling and we could see the old bricks underneath. On one of the tombs in Lafayette Cemetery, the bricks were broken, too, and we could look inside. Not that I could see anything but dirt and more crumbling bricks, but it took me a while to gather up the courage to look in at all.
Tuesday was also the day that we drove around through the Garden District and looked at all of the magnificent homes. One of the things that I was really struck by is how lush and extravagant the flowers and plants are. Everything is covered with azaleas and rhododendron. There are beds of pansies and violets everywhere, and palm trees (date palms, I think). It reminded me so much of going to Florida, where we were surrounded by lush greenery everywhere.
Tuesday was also the airboat tour day - my very favorite thing. Aside from the sheer pleasure of riding on the airboat, which would have been enough for me, we got to see interesting scenery and alligators and learn about the area.

Stevie, our guide, explained about the places where freshwater and salt water mix - he took us to different areas and showed us how the trees/plants change. Most of the swamp has cypress trees, with their spread-out roots in the water, but that's only in fresh water. In the area where the salt water joins in, the trees change and thin out, and there aren't alligators or as many fish - they don't like the brackish water. He also told us that the Disney Channel sent actors from "The Princess and the Frog" on an airboat tour from his company, and he showed us where they stopped to take promotional photos.

He also showed us orange trees with oranges growing, and he took us out onto Lake Salvator. He showed us how people set up cane poles in the water to catch catfish and come back to check them once a day.
One of Lauren's favorite vacation things is that we got to swim or at least put our feet in the pool at our hotels every night - outside pools. None of the hotels in Louisiana had indoor pools, but it was warm enough to swim outside.

Wednesday and Thursday - Zoo, Shreveport, the horse races and home

I'm typing this from the cozy spot in my front room, sitting beside the heater vent. 'Cause it's cold in here, baby. About halfway home from Shreveport I started shivering, and I haven't really stopped. I'd forgotten how the climate can differ within the U.S. - my body had happily adjusted to Louisiana, with the shorts and the sunscreen and the swimming outside. Kansas is a rude awakening - 39 degrees?? Blech!
Yesterday morning, we got up and headed for the New Orleans Audubon Zoo. I had hoped to go to the Insectarium, but it's located in the heart of the French Quarter, and I just couldn't mentally work myself up to going back - I'm completely not cut out for frantic city driving and stressful parking and jam-packed, hold-onto-your-wallet-so-no-one-steals-it environments. So we went to the Zoo and had a marvelous time. It's located on its original property from 1832 (I think that's the right year), and like pretty much every single other thing in New Orleans, it's gorgeous. Like artistic, graceful, architecturally astounding type of gorgeous. Buildings that you'd never expect to see at a zoo, lovely sculptures, design details, fountains, pavilions, etc. And the animals were good, too. :) They had sea lions, which are almost always my favorites, and an ornate carousel, where Lauren rode the albino alligator.
There are a million more things, but it's midnight, and I'm exhausted, so I'll have to add to this tomorrow.
Carla

Tuesday - Airboat Swamp Tour and cemeteries

Airboats are my new favorite thing. If ever I decide to have a mid-life job change, my first choice in new vocation is to drive an airboat, and maybe give tours so that I can make some extra money.
Our tour was AMAZING. Our guide was named Stevie - a big ol' Cajun man, with a great sense of humor, who sat behind us and chain-smoked while showing us the best of the bayou. Lauren's favorite thing is that she got to hold a baby alligator, named Bud. She also got to feed big alligators - they come when you throw out big marshmallows (which Stevie calls "swamp crack"). Stevie said that they also come over for donuts! He brought chicken along, in case we got one of the big ones to come over, but that didn't work out. We saw 2 of the big ones - one of them was 12 feet long, and the other one was too scared of the airboat to let us get very close, so we're not sure how long it is. The ones that Lauren got to throw marshmallows to were 6-8 feet.

We spent the morning touring old cemetaries. All of the cemetaries here are above ground, since the water table is so close to the surface. I am fascinated by them - many of them are marble and ornate, with carvings and statues and stained glass and wrought iron gates. We went to the Metairie Cemetary, where about half of the tombs date from the early 1800s, and it is still being used today. There's a beautiful one shaped like a pyramid with a Sphinx guarding it. Lauren's excited because she bought a book at the book fair about a girl who lived in New Orleans during the yellow fever epidemic, and is buried in the Lafayette Cemetary. We drove to that cemetery, too, and Lauren and I walked through looking for the book character. All cemeteries in New Orleans close promptly at 3:00, though, and their gates are locked, so we got shooed out before we found it. However, it's kind of magical to see the actual location of a book you've been immersed in, and Lauren was thrilled with the whole experience - she kept touching things and saying "This is just how I imagined it!"
Today we are heading to the New Orleans Audubon Zoo and City Park, and then picking up our trailer from the race track and heading for Shreveport. I'm hoping that we can find something fun to do in Shreveport tomorrow before we head home, but we'll see...
Carla

Monday in Metairie, aka "New Orleans is not where I want to live"

We had a nice relaxing start to our day - didn't have to be anywhere at any certain time. We got packed back up and left Donaldsonville this morning, heading for New Orleans. On the way, we stopped at the San Fransisco Plantation in Garyville, LA. They said that it's the most opulent plantation house in North America. It's right on the east bank of the Mississippi River - in fact, the former front yard is now a levee that holds back the river. It's a really unusual looking plantation - very different than the others we've seen - the woman who lived there was German, and through a series of events, wound up living in Louisiana when she desperately wanted to live in Germany. To make it up to her, her husband let her decorate it however she wanted. It is a Creole style house, accented with turquoise, surrounded by huge live oaks and amazing flower beds everywhere. We took a tour from a costumed guide, but L's favorite thing was the slave quarters. One thing I thought was really interesting was the lists of the slaves (on an inventory of the masters' property) - it listed each slave by name, their race, their specialty (like potter or house slave or field hand) and any health concerns (like asthmatic). Very interesting.

Next we headed into New Orleans. We stopped at our hotel, then went to eat at the diner that is in our parking lot. It's called City Diner and it has wonderful food - I'd seen really great reviews about it on TripAdvisor. We all had sandwiches, and they were literally BIGGER THAN MY HEAD! I had a chicken cordon bleu sandwich, with spinach sprinkled into the swiss sauce that was over it - yummmm! The only down side is that we all had leftovers, of course, and our room doesn't have a fridge.

We headed into the French Quarter for the afternoon. That was quite an experience. I think I'm still processing...definitely one of those things that are part of the "American experience". It was a scary place to walk around with a kid - I was so tense the whole time. One of the things that I want Lauren to know is that there's a big wide world out there, full of people and things she doesn't see in our little sheltered world - but we might have had a little overload of that today. Between the people handing out free condoms, the people accosting us (trying to sell shoe-shines, but yelling the f-word at Stuart when we walked away), really smelly street bands of people that might fall into the category of street people or gypsies, etc, she saw all kinds of unusual types today. On the plus side, we saw amazing architecture, fascinating homes packed into structures that I'd never seen before, street artists, beautiful decorations left from Mardi Gras, and took a horse-drawn carriage ride around the French Quarter. We got to walk beside the French Market to see the Mississippi, and there was a steamboat docking, playing calliope music. (I wanted to stay and watch, but this was when the shoe-shine man episode happened). L hated the smell on the streets - I don't know if it always smells like that, or if it is just because Mardi Gras ended not so long ago. Her favorite part was the carriage ride - we were pulled by a mule named Andy, and the driver let her pet Andy. Our carriage was white with red plush seats, and in a funny coincidence, the people who sat in front of us were from Arkansas, and the people behind us were from Indiana. The man who provided our tour, Max, grew up in the French Quarter, and told us stories about what things were like when he was a kid, as well as telling us about the history of the buildings.

Our pizza just arrived, and I'm starving, so I'm going to go eat!
Carla