Much Needed Vacation

It's been a long time since I last posted. That's mostly due to the cable which connects the camera to the computer having gone missing. I guess I could have posted without uploading any pictures, but I always like to put up some pics so I didn't blog.

We've looked high and low for that missing cable to no avail and I just can't imagine where it's gone to. However, Jim just bought me this nifty little device that allows a number of different sized sd cards to be inserted into it which then connects to the computer, thus doing away with the need for the other cable.

Ok, so on to the good stuff. We took a little vacation last week to New Orleans. It was a spur of the moment booking as a surprise birthday gift to Jim to celebrate his 50th birthday which is this coming Sunday. Everything just fell into place when it came to this trip. Logan was on spring break, his last day of which is today, and Jim was on vacation last week as he tries to time his vacations to coincide with Logan's breaks from school so all that remained was me being able to get some time off from my job and we'd be able to get away. My boss was cool about it and gave me the 3 days I needed. I'd been considering for months what to do to celebrate such a momentous life anniversary. After all, one turns half a century only once so it needed to be marked in some way. I really didn't want to throw a big, fancy dinner at which I'd spend a lot of money feeding all his friends and have nothing to show for it after those couple of hours passed. So, I thought perhaps a mini vacation would be a much better use of the money which would also offer us memories to cherish as a family.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago when one night we were watching tv and something came on about New Orleans. Logan said, "we should go there sometime" and jokingly Jim said, "hey, we should. Book it up, honey." That gave me an idea and the following 3 days found me at my computer during whatever free time I had doing research into a trip to the Big Easy. Little did Jim know when he said, "book it up" that I actually would. LOL

We had a really great time in New Orleans. 4 days was the perfect amount of time there and boy, did we pack in the activities. Between the two of us, Jim and I managed to take more than 2,500 pictures. Logan was in charge of video taping. I deleted several hundred pictures when we came home as Jim doesn't quite know when or how to turn off the flash so the pictures were bad but that still left us with plenty of fabulous shots of our mini vacation. I'll have tons of pictures to scrap.

N'awlins is such a pretty town, especially the French Quarter that just begs to be photographed. The Garden District is equally picturesque with those amazing mansions and well manicured lawns. Everyone we encountered was very pleasant and helpful.

On our first day there after settling into the hotel, we ventured out to explore our new surroundings. Our hotel was just 1 block from the French Quarter so it wasn't long or far until we were right in the thick of all the fun.

Here are Jim and Logan at the famous Cafe Du Monde. The service wasn't so great as we waited nearly a half hour for someone to come and clean our table and take our order but the sugary goodness called a beignet and coffee more than made up for the wait. While we waited, I got to talking with some ladies on the adjacent table which provided us with some helpful hints as to what to do and see while there. They'd been there many times before so they were a fountain of information.









Here is the view from our 22nd floor hotel room. It took a while to get down to the lobby from such a high floor because we stopped so frequently on the way down, but the view was pretty nice. I managed to snap this picture of a cruise ship heading down the Mississippi River. We saw many, very large ships go past our view.









This was a typical sight on Bourbon Street. Nearly every balcony had people on it enjoying themselves to the music that filled the air.

We went to the Insectarium which was just across the street and 1 block over from our hotel. I was very hesitant about going in there as I'm not keen on bugs but seeing as it was included in the package we bought, it made sense to get our money's worth. I saw some reallllllllllllllllly creepy crawlies.









We came across these guys as we wandered around the French Quarter. We would see many street performers during our time there but none quite like these guys. I don't think I've ever seen an "instrument" like the one he's playing.









I have plenty more pics to post but I'll do that later. For now, thanks for stopping by and I hope you are having a great day!