Sunday was my due date and I wasn't interested in being home thinking about what I would have been doing so we left. To New Orleans. No reason other than that Greg and I like exploring new cities, which after exploring a city with children, we decided that city-exploring is for adults and that for the amount of money we spent and time spent listening to whining, we should have just gone to Disneyland. Next time I guess.
We left early Monday morning for the 11 1/2 hour drive to New Orleans. We stayed just outside the French Quarter which is run-down, stinky, loud and not 100% suitable for children, or adults for that matter. It's like a giant tourist party all day, every day. After settling in we got dinner as nearby cafe and listened to some live jazz, which is pretty much the only thing people talk about in New Orleans, and walked down to the Mississippi.
 |
| This naughty girl spent the drive drawing on herself. |
 |
| We didn't even watch movies for the first half of the drive. I found some kid-friendly podcasts so we listened to those. |
Tuesday we went on a swamp tour, which I thought the kids would love but they whined for food most of the time. I thought it was interesting. We even got to hold a live alligator. Tuesday afternoon we swam in the roof top pool of the place we were staying until the chemicals in the pool made all my kids break out so left. That night we ate at a super fancy restaurant which was so good and shopped for souvenirs in the French Market. When we came out of the restaurant after dinner, a jazz parade just happened to be walking by so we stayed and watched that too.
 |
| Nature sounds, am I right? |
 |
| Zora took this pelt around to a bunch of people and told them to pet it. |
 |
| Greg holding the exotic Zora-gator |
Wednesday I wanted to get more stamps in my National Park book and there just so happened to be two National Historic Sites in the French Quarter so we went to those--one was the Jean Laffite site (he did something to help settle New Orleans--I'm not sure the little kids weren't into reading the signs) and the other was a jazz museum where a ranger was explaining how to play jazz, which was interesting to me but not to Zora and Henry so we left. We spent the rest of the afternoon riding the street car and visiting the massive city park, which had a sculpture garden and a storybook village. We also got snow cones because it was so hot.
 |
| STAMPS! |
Thursday I wanted to take a steamboat tour of the city that ends at an old battlefield where I could get another stamp in my book, but more so I wanted the kids to have fun and not whine and they voted to go to the aquarium. So I took the little 3 to the over-priced aquarium that was just an aquarium while Greg and Rex went to the World War II Museum. Both were fine but in the end Greg and I wish we would have over-riden the kids and done something unique to New Orleans and its history and stuck with the steam boat tour or a the voodoo tour. Whatever. That night we went to the Garden District for dessert and realized that that's the nice part of New Orleans and that we should have stayed there. Then we drove around some of the neighborhoods that were flooded during Hurricane Katrina and snapped a picture by the lake that was the major cause of flooding during the hurricane.
 |
| Henry was so patient waiting for a parakeet to land on his stick. |
Friday we did not want to drive the 12 hours home so we decided to drive three hours to Gulf Shore, Alabama, hang out for a bit and then drive 3 more hours to Montgomery, Alabama and then Saturday we would drive the last 6 hours stopping a few times to get more stamps in my book. But the kids had so much fun on the beach that we decided to stay there so we could play more in the morning and then we'd drive a few hours and finish up Sunday morning and make it home in time for 1 o'clock church but then we decided to just do the whole thing. We got home at 2 am Sunday morning.
But let me tell you, gulf coast beaches are, you know, the best. Perfect water temperature. Perfect sand. And the state park even had showers so we could shower before driving home. Greg and I also said next time maybe we'll just go to the beach for a week instead.
 |
| Greg is the only one who got burnt--the rest of us wore long-sleeved rash guards and looked like white nerds, but I'll take that to a sunburn any day. |
 |
| Greg is showing the kids how levies work and building a sand-New Orleans. |
So I made it through my due date. It wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't horrible either. Mostly I just think of Baby Five as a March baby since that's when she was born. Either way, I'm super grateful that we got to go on this fun family trip and make some new, happy memories, interspersed with whining, of course.
