Thanksgiving 2011

In usual fashion, we headed up north to Roseville for the Thansgiving holiday. But this year we did something different. Instead of driving up Wednesday afternoon when Luke got home from work, we left Thursday morning. I am really glad we did because Luke was exausted Wednesday night from a very busy week at work.
Thursday morning we woke up at our usual time, since we have the "Wiggy Alarm clock." We grabbed some breakfast and hit the road by 9am.

Thanksgiving lunch in Chowchilla.

The drive was pretty uneventful---thank goodness. We got to my parents' house about two hours before dinner and it was just enough time to peruse the sales ads from the paper. My favorite Thanksgiving activity!
Dinner was fabulous--as always, with lots of food. We had the traditional pumpkin pie and apple pie with some homemade cream concoction on top. It was a masterpiece!

After dinner:

My wonderful sister-in-law talked me and mom into joining her at midnight madness at the Galleria. I wanted to go, but I was tired. I laid down around 10pm and my mom came and woke me around 11:30 to go. I threw on my dad's hat from when he was a Seabee to hide my scary hair. It was nice shopping in my pajamas...along with thousands of other moms in their pj's.

We ended up getting home from the Galleria around 3:30am. Crazy!! What was I nuts?!!
Friday morning I slept until 8'ish and I took the kids with Grandpa to his work to feed the saltwater fishes. Very neat.

Friday afternoon Luke and my dad took the boys to see the "hugo" movie. While they were gone I crashed on the couch with Wiggy.

Grandpa and Luke made a breakfast dinner that I LOVE. Buttermilk pancakes, bacon and omelettes. I ate too much!

Saturday morning we putted around the house and got ready for family pictures. I called the MAC store a few weeks earlier and made an appt. It was pretty cool. I have never done one before. But--the "makeover" was free if you spend $50 worth of product. It was a deal. My mom went with me and made sure I didn't look like Bozo the Clown. :)
Before:

After:

It was very fun to watch the girl do my make-up since I don't know what I'm doing half the time.

Family pictures at 2:30 in Old Town Sacramento. Our friend Rohan took our pictures. We met Rohan in 2002 when he was a missionary in our ward from New Zealand.

After pictures Rohan gave each of the kids a coupon for a free apple at the Rocky Mountain Fudge Factory. This made the kids very happy.

Saturday night my mom made homemade pizza for everyone and my dad made his famous fudge. (One of my other favorite things to do on Thanksgiving weekend. I always hover over my dad while he stirs, in hopes that I can lick the pot when he is done pouring the fudge into the pan.)

Sunday morning we were up and on the road. We made one quick stop on the road to get lunch at Panda Express. It was a nice cruise home until we had a little fender bender in Tulare. The cars in front of us slammed on their breaks suddenly. We were in the fast lane and were able to barely slip over into the right lane within inches of hitting the car in front of us. The car behind us tried to do the same thing and slammed into the back of us right after we changed lanes. Lucky for us, our car had minor damage to the hitch and rear fender. The sedan that hit us was near totaled I think and needed a tow truck. The driver was ok and we both sat on the side of the road waiting for the police to come and take out information.
We all said a prayer. We were very, very thankful we didn't slam into the back of the SUV in front of us going 40-50 mph. That would've been a cruddy way to end the holiday.
Overall wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I am so glad we get to visit with my family this weekend every year.

New Orleans 2011

In late October I had an SAP conference in New Orleans.
It sounded like a great opportunity when I registered, since neither Luke or I have been. We contemplated on taking the kids out of school and bringing them with us, but in the end we were able to go just the two of us. Thankfully, Grandma and Grandpa Hogue sacrificed their time to stay at our house for five days with the kids.
We left early Saturday morning for LAX.

Our plane left at 11:30am and we arrived uneventfully by supper time. Of course whenever we leave the kids, it seems the first day is just full of worry. It didn't help that Tubbs kept calling my cell phone all.day.long. He was upset about an incident at school the day before and wanted to talk about it. Over and over and over and over.
Anyways...by the time we got the rental car and back to the hotel it was around 7pm. We cleaned up and headed out to find dinner. The hotel was downtown in the French Quarter so there was lots of things to see. We walked around for a few hours and after dinner we found Bourbon Street. That was a very interesting street....to say the least. It was a party all right. Every street that ran parallel to it was quiet as could be, but not Bourbon Street.

Waiting for our first meal...and it was worth it.

The best fried pickles ever!!

Bourbon Street

Cafe Dumonde on Decatur Street. Ww tried out these world famous beignets and their hot cocoa. They were ok, but nothing I would go back for.

Sunday morning we eat breakfast at a great place we read about online from Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. They had the best bananas foster French Toast.

Next we decided to drive the coastline through Mississipp and into Alabama. It was less than two hours and it was beautiful. Im really glad we made the quick trip over. The beaches of Mississippi were awesome...with white sand and warm water.

I would love to have a house like this on the beach

Made it into Alabama. We drove down south to Dauphin Island.

Sunday evening we walked around downtown some more to find souvenirs for the kids.

The conference started Monday and I was glad we were staying in the same hotel as the conference. I was able to leave the room five minutes before my first session started and be on time.

Tuesday evening we drove across Lake Ponchotrain, on the longest bridge in North America. Pretty neat. We drove across and turned around and came back. Exciting! :)

Another cafe with bananas foster French Toast. I wasn't complaining....I love this stuff.

Its all the other "traditional" southern food I couldn't stand. I wasn't into fried shrimp, po-boy sandwiches, Gumbo, Jambalaya....or anything else with seafood in it. We really had a hard time trying to find places to eat for dinner. Our last night there we ate at the place we found our first night, since the fried pickles and fried chicken were so good.

They love Halloween in this city. We found lots of "dark magic" and Voo-doo shops. Almost a shame the conference wasn't the week after so we could see how they celebrate Halloween on Bourbon street.
Red Velvet cake from "The Candy Bar" on Bourbon Street. The only decent place to stop on that whole street!

Before we flew home on Wednesday we drove an hour to some plantations. It felt kind of silly smiling and posing for pictures, but I guess its a tourist thing to do---proof that we were there. The fact that Luke taught 8th grade US History came in handy because I felt like I had my own personal tour guide. It was so very surreal to be here in the place where so much history was made...as well as pain and suffering. A few plantations were authentic so you could see everything as it was when there slaves. I felt very blessed is all I could think as we walked around. I am glad that Luke suggested we make the drive over before we left Louisiana.

The airport was EMPTY. Seriously. I guess everything shuts down at 8pm. Not like there was a lot of shops or places to eat anyways.

Our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30pm and it ended up being delayed over an hour. That might for a LONG night---considering we had to drive 110 miles from LAX to home. We ended up getting into bed at 2am. Which made for a short night since I had to get up at 5:45am for work on Thursday. Back to reality!!

A note on the garage door to welcome us back. Apparently the boys really missed their daddy. Good thing we are a package deal.
My synopsis on New Orleans: I don't think I will ever have a desire to go back. It was a neat opportunity to go...for free. But it was not a place I would pay to come back to. I do want to visit those beaches on the Gulf Coast for sure. And I am really thrilled Luke was able to come with me so we could experience another first together. It really made the conference more enjoyable.