N'awlins!

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents and I met up with my favorite (and only) sister in New Orleans for Memorial Day weekend. We had a really great time together. I'm glad we made the trip but it's definitely not somewhere that I'm dying to see again. Bourbon Street is an experience (lots of interesting sights and smells!!), but we had a great hotel and good location. We took some time to do a bit of sightseeing. Let me tell you one thing though....it is so HAWT down there!!! Hot and humid. We practically melted! Here are a few pictures and a little recap of our trip.

One of our adventures was a swamp tour where we went out onto the river and back into the swamp. We got to see a few alligators and other wildlife creatures up close and personal! Kinda fun!! A little scary but we left with all of our limbs intact. :)

One of my favorite stops was to the following cafe....it's open 24 hours a day and it served french donuts called beignets. They are amazing!! It's like a really, really awesome funnel cake and there is always about 100 people in line to get 'em. Worth the wait.




We had some tasty drinks, as you can imagine, in New Orleans....including some test tube shots and Hurricanes!


We had some great food in New Orleans, including lots of seafood and this is one of the THREE bread puddings we tried while we were there...pretty tasty. The crawfish below were my dad's. Ugh. He seemed pretty happy about it though.

We toured the warehouse where quite a few of the Mardi Gras floa ts are stored. I saw a few familiar faces in these guys....

Besides the trip, summer is in full effect here. I've spent some time at some friend's pools and also made a trip to Wichita last weekend to see friends. Looking forward to a trip to KC this weekend for my 5-year reunion for my grad school class at KU. I'm really excited to catch up with some friends I haven't seen for quite awhile!

Connected.

Where to start?! I have been computer-free at my house for several weeks and FINALLY got my computer cord in the mail yesterday (mine stopped working, so the computer wouldn't charge). Since I haven't really posted for almost a month and it has been a busy month of summer, I will try to do an overview.

To back up, I will start with my Topeka "Stay-ca-tion" the last week of June. My sis was in town from Dallas and we found lots of fun here, along with me getting moved into my house....more on that another time. The week went by of course too quickly, but we had a great time. We saw 3 movies: "The Proposal", "The Hangover" and "My Sister's Keeper", all very good but differnt types of shows for sure. I pretty much cried during the entire showing of "My Sister's Keeper"...quite a mess, but just a pretty big fan of my own sister. We also found one day to go lay out at the pool at our parents' new neighborhood pool, which was fun, although I'm not too sure how effective for my see-through skin.

Here are some pictures of the eventful week of family time....

During this week was also my parents' 30th wedding anniversary. On the day of, we went to KC and did some shopping, ate at "The Yard House" and went to a Royals game.

The next day, we went to dinner at a restaurant here in Topeka called "The Row House" and it was SO good! Wednesdays are their sample nights and for each of the 7 courses, they bring you a little taste. It's in an old row house (hence, the name) downtown and is close to the capital building that you can see in the background in one of the pics. Very cool building and good food.

Also, for my parents' anniversary, Megan and I had a card shower for them and their friends and some family sent cards to Meg. We gave them all of the cards in this box- they were definitely surprised!

I also made a quilt for them to have to remember their anniversary. Not sure how much my dad will cuddle up with it while he is watching sports, but I enjoyed making it for them. :)

Lastly, I have to brag about my sister's unselfish helping during her week off. What a trooper!Here is my carpenter in front of the two bookshelves and desk that she put together for me. I got them at Target and then next day she had all of the manual labor done. Thanks Meg, I promise our next vacation with involve less hammers and nails!! :)