Goodbye, Summer

This is it. Summer is finished. I have been back at work for a week. The kids have had one last hurrah lounging around and relaxing.

This morning at breakfast, as we sat around the table, everyone took turns sharing our personal high points of the summer. It has been a good one. We have gone on road trips, visited family and friends, had a vacation, been incredibly lazy, and just had a good time being together.

In no particular order, here are our favorites:

Sewing camp, which led to lots of other little projects at home...

My juicer...

Lots of arts and crafts...

My sister's wedding...

Keeping cool in the backyard...

Lots of swimming. :)

Baseball games (Go Rangers!)...

The neighborhood splash pad...

Crabbing and the beach...

Our 4th of July celebration...

Vacation to New Orleans and the aquarium...

Lots of friends! :)

We are heading back into the school year feeling refreshed and ready to jump back into the daily grind.

Summer of Adventure: #14 New Orleans

Warning: This post is heavy on the photos!

My husband is a sweet, sweet man (contrary to popular belief) and planned a surprise vacation for our family. Our long time college friends, the Milfords, live in Auburn, Alabama where Mike is a professor at Auburn University. After college, we have always lived within four hours of each other until this last move for them. Now they are many, many hours away from us and it had been almost two years since we had last seen each other. The husbands got together and planned a family meeting. They chose New Orleans because it was exactly halfway for both families. At first, I was ecstatic to see the whole family and then a little skeptical about meeting in New Orleans because I've heard so much about how it can be a sketchy place to visit. I will say that I'm positive that it can get sketchy, but we were able to completely enjoy the town and not run into anything inappropriate for the kids. In fact, we had a wonderful time and would love to go back and visit again.

To prep for our trip, I found an idea and completely stole it. The kids get so restless in the car and I did not want to rely on electronics for a good trip. I went out and bought a package of paper sacks, some snacks and a couple of small toys for each kid (one for the trip up and one for the trip back.) I divided the trip into thirds, wrote the name of the town where they should open the treat and the name of the kid on each bag. The first bag had a small toy and a little piece of candy. The second bag had a bag of goldfish. The third bag had a fruit roll up. I think that the kids were more excited about the treat bags than the trip for a little bit. They oohed and ahhed over the snacks and were so excited over the experience. I will definitely do that again.

It was a fun way to kick off our trip.
It has been since high school since I had been through Louisiana and I enjoyed the scenery. We had our eyes open for alligators the whole way there. We drove through lots of swamp.
The kids didn't know that we were meeting up with anyone, so seeing the Milfords was a terrific surprise!
They all picked right up as though it hadn't been so long since they had last been together.

We rented out an apartment in the Garden District and were within walking or very short driving distance to everything. The apartment was really great because we were able to use a kitchen and have all the amenities of home (washer/dryer, etc.)
We took off for downtown to see the sights and the French Quarter. We were a large group running around. We had 7 kids and 4 adults between the two families.

Here is where I will say that we were very conscious of where we were and what time of day that we were sight seeing. We stayed away from Bourbon Street (there's tons to see without going there), we were careful to only sight see in broad daylight and not go at night, and we didn't take the kids into the touristy gift shops. We saw nothing inappropriate and everything was extremely family friendly.
The architecture is beautiful there and very colorful.
We went to Jackson Square and saw the St. Louis Cathedral. Landry was convinced that this was Disneyland and that the princesses were going to pop out any second. She asked to see them for the rest of the time that we were there.
This church was beautiful and filled with history. Once again, Landry was looking for the princesses.
We took a little break in the shade. Thankfully, we were all pretty used to the humidity, so it wasn't so bad.
We found Pirate's Alley. Mike had been to New Orleans before, so he was giving us the tour of the cool places that he had been. Evidently, real life pirate business took place here, hence the name.
Aargh!
We started counting cannons in the downtown area. This was one of 6 that we counted in one block.
Here was another one.

They were beginning to wilt... We checked into the tourism office and they directed us to a lunch spot. Their recommendation was not wrong! My sister lived in New Orleans for a while and would always go on and on about the food. No wonder! I am hooked. We had shrimp po'boys for lunch along with soft shell crab and of course ice cream. I was really excited to try the soft shell crab. It was really wonderful.

After getting a second wind, we headed down to Cafe du Monde for beignets. They were pretty great as well. I don't think that you can beat deep fried batter smothered in powdered sugar. There was a jazz group playing music right outside the restaurant. We were getting the full experience!

Full of sugar and beignets, we continued our adventures. The kids found this fountain and danced round and round. Hayden danced around and around until he fell in the fountain and had soaking wet tennis shoes. Dad had to go get him a pair of flip flops to finish out the afternoon.

The girls were really getting into it...

Landry and June were taking a little break.

Shane's one request while we were there was to hit up City Park. City Park is New Orleans' answer to New York's Central Park and it was very impressive. They had play areas and beautiful green space with huge trees and lots of hanging moss, a football stadium, golf course, lakes, a sculpture garden, amusement park, etc. We were all very impressed.
This place was called Storybook Park and it has been part of the park since the 1950s. It was the most charming play area I have ever seen. It was filled with trees, a little stream with rocks and bridges, and themed play areas tucked throughout the park that were all famous children's stories. Old Mother Hubbard, Cinderella, and Peter Pan were just some of the areas. We played here for a couple of hours.

This huge dragon slide was one of the favorites.

We finished off our afternoon with a zooming trip through the sculpture garden. It started as a stroll, but after having to explain a couple of nude sculptures, we found the one we were looking for and left.

Here it is!

These two hit if off really well. I see an arranged marriage in our future.

After an afternoon of sightseeing we headed back to the apartment for dinner, swimming and watching the Olympics.

The next day we hit up a New Orleans institution for lunch, Mothers. I have never had such wonderful food in all my life. Shane let me taste the gumbo, and then got mad because I took too big of a bite. I had to go get him more. It was that good. They had the best beans and rice, shrimp, gumbo and bread pudding that I have ever had. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

After lunch, we all said our goodbyes.

We decided to go and see one last thing before we left town. We had heard about the aquarium downtown and it did not disappoint.

As we started our tour, this covered hallway was the first experience. The sting rays and ocean life swimming all around us was quite magical.

Hayden, my science and animal lover, was in hog heaven and his enthusiasm was contagious.

Our only bit of forced family fun came from feeding the sting rays. Shane ran over when we first got there and purchased the limited tickets and we made sure to be first in line when it was time. Hayden was ready. Grace was ready. Gibson was starting to get really nervous. Landry refused to look in the tank.

They heard the instructions and it was time. Hayden jumped right in and fed all of his fish. Grace was fine and was having a blast. Landry started screaming and ran the other way. Gibson was so nervous he couldn't stick his hand into the writhing mass of slimy fish things in the water. Shane was getting frustrated as there was a whole line of other little kids waiting their turn behind us. I started laughing inappropriately.

After all of that, we headed on to the rest of the tour. These guys were in the shark tank and were trying to clean the windows. This where I realized that I am in the correct line of work. You couldn't pay me enough money to crawl in that tank with all of those huge fish, turtles, and sharks! One guy was cleaning the window and the other two were using sticks to shoo the big fish away. Every now and then a shark would sneak up behind one of them before they would turn around with their stick. I was about to have a heart attack panicking for them!

We got in the car and hit up one more spot on our way out. We had seen a little blip about the grilled oysters at a place called Drago's. By this time, the little guys were about to pass out, so we didn't go in. Shane ran in and ordered a dozen grilled oysters and brought them out to the parking lot. None of us had ever had oysters, so we weren't sure if we were going to like them. The kids gathered around the hood of the car and we polished off those oysters in a jiffy. They were delicious! Definitely one of my favorite food experiences.

We will definitely be going back. This was a trip packed full of memories.

Stitches and Seam Rippers

This last spring I signed the kids up for 4-H. I have many, many fond memories of fantastic 4-H experiences as a kid and I have been eager for my kids to see what the buzz is about.

This summer the boys got to participate in a day camp and Grace has been to an outdoor grilling camp and a sewing camp.

This picture is from the sewing camp last week. 4-H is always good about pairing up with outside agencies and this camp was no different. They brought in several ladies from a sewing club to work with the girls and assist them as they used sewing machines to make a pillow case, a cute little bag and clay buttons.

She has used my machine before, so she knew a little of what she was doing. She said that the worst part was having to use the seam ripper a couple of times to take out mistakes.

This was her finished pillowcase from the class. It is super cute.

After the camp was over, she got inspired at the house and took a couple of scraps and fixed another pillow for her bed. It was fun to be able to set her loose with the sewing machine and know that she could handle it.

Here was her creation with no adult supervision. She is coming right along.

Summer of Adventure: #13 Aunt Esther Came to Visit

This title sounds like a children's book. Might as well be, I guess...

We had a blast when Aunt Esther came to visit us for a week. She has graduated from college and is part of the real world now, where vacation time is limited and far in between. We were honored that she chose to spend hers with us!

We didn't have much planned. We lounged around and read a lot of books. (She brought the Hunger Games series and even though I'm so late to this party it's not even funny, what a great series! I liked them very much.)

We took the kids to the children's museum. The day that we went was packed and it was nice to have her help me watch the kids.

She sat in the sun with us at the splash park. (You can tell that we are full of excitement! We were basically ticking through all of our adventures.)

We took the kids to an outdoor theatre and caught a play. No one was very impressed. That was a bunch of what a friend of mine calls, "Forced Family Fun." It was supposed to be great. We packed a picnic lunch. We brought a blanket to sit on the green lawn. Esther was ready to sun on the lawn. The kids hated it. The fun that we were supposed to have was completely lost to them. No one listened to the play. They just fussed over how hot it was, when are we going home, why did I make them come here, etc. Probably the last time that I try that...at least until I forget how miserable that was and I try it again...that's what usually happens to me. Next time I'll make sure that Shane is with me. There's nothing that makes him happier than outings that turn out like that. Actually, that makes me laugh out loud to think of saving that for Shane.

Anyway, the rest of our week was much better...
There was shopping. (That was a fun day!) Coffee. You can't go wrong with coffee.

One day we took off for our beach. Landry "peeled" her eyes the whole way there because she was so excited.
She really was happy even though she looks a little mad in this picture. She loves the beach more than anyone in our family. That is saying something.
Hayden and I were cheesing it up for the camera.
Gibson found a fishing pole in the garage that someone had given to him for a birthday or something and it had never been opened. He was begging to bring it and I was saying no. (In case you have never brought a fishing pole on a trip with children before, you should. It is a ball of fun, or tangled and mangled fishing line. Whichever way you want to look at it.) Esther acted like I was a crazy mother for not letting my child experience nature and bring that fishing pole, so I told Gibson that if Esther was ready to help him out when we got there, that it was fine with me. (hee hee hee) We got to the beach and she had just settled into her chair and here came Gibson. It was such fun to watch the two of them struggle with that pole as they were getting everything ready and then untangled...and then ready and then untangled...
I did not say, "I told you so."
She was a good sport and Gibson had fun. She is still the "cool aunt" in his book.
We packed a picnic lunch and enjoyed every last bit of it. Food always tastes better outside.
This was right before Gibson showed up with the fishing pole. That might have been the last bit of relaxation while we were there.
After we played in the water for awhile, we introduced Aunt Esther to crabbing. We brought along some chicken and string and tried to put our expertise to work. (We've only been once before.) We didn't catch much, but we did have fun.
After all of that fun, we stopped at a little beach shack on the way home for some ice cream.
These little baby bananas were growing on the tree on our way out. How I love to live in a place where we see stuff like that!

Besides our couple of outings, we did a lot of swimming. Esther worked on her tan. The kids had a blast in the pool.
They were playing a "diving" game.
We enjoyed a cookout and were so sorry to see her go. We can't wait until she comes again!