Sonya's Blog - Day 232 - Happy Birthday to Blake and Happy Mardi Gras!

Sonya’s Blog - Day 232 - February 9th - Happy Birthday Blake, Oh, and Happy Mardi Gras!

Blake’s birthday. I got up early and made him pancakes. This worked out well, because it is Pancake Day and Blake loves pancakes! I also brought him tea in bed, so I am pretty sweet to him.

Isaac made edible light sabres, before they were eaten a duel had to take place:

Blake wanted to go to some Mardi Gras parades after breakfast. We checked the Parade Tracker app and the parades started early today. Krewe of Zulu started at 8 AM and Krewe of Rex started at 10 AM. Well it was already 9:45, so we were running behind if we wanted to catch the action and not have to go all the way into the French Quarter. We hurried and got ready and headed out the door. We managed to catch the end of Krewe of Rex and then right after that the Semi-Truck parade started. This parade has no marching bands or dancers, it is just semi after semi after semi. Individual communities get together and decorate a semi-truck to participate in this parade. The advantage of this, is that, you do not have to be a part of a Krewe, but can still participate in Mardi Gras. We stood in front of a school and Blake got to talking with a lady. She happened to be the principal of the school, so she was filling him in. She estimated that there would be about 50 semi-trucks. When we left, the parade was on truck #89 and we could see no end to the line of trucks still to come. Isaac wanted to stay until the bitter end, but we had already been there for over 2 hours and were already laden down with stuff.

Blake decided he would like to have some more gumbo before we leave New Orleans, so we went in search of a good gumbo place. Here is the thing about Mardi Gras, it is a major event in New Orleans. Many of the businesses are closed and this restaurant was no exception. When we were walking down to the parade, there were quite a few cafe’s and other businesses and only one coffee shop was open. We went to it to get a coffee and they had no coffee left - they ran out because they were so busy! So no gumbo. Blake decided he didn’t want to drive around and search for a place that was open, so we thought we would go to the store and pick up some stuff. Well the grocery store was closed too! Walgreens was open, so we were able to get some milk so I could make him a latte at the RV.

I found some food in the RV and made some lunch. We then took Kizmet for a walk. We could here a whole bunch of music behind us and thought there may be a community parade or celebration, so we walked over there. It was just a clubhouse or something, there was a party of some sort going on inside and they were blasting out the tunes. Kizmet had a good walk, but it was quite a run-down neighbourhood and there was lots of broken glass on the road, so we had to be careful.

Blake bought himself a new chess set for his birthday. It is pretty fancy and the boys sat down to play a game. Isaac is getting really good now, learning some new moves. They had lots of fun and Natasha and I just did our own thing.

It was getting late and was time for supper. Blake wanted steak and potatoes, so that’s what we had. I threw in a salad to round it out. Everyone helped out, so that made it go much faster. It was very tasty, Blake had bought some excellent steaks.

The next thing Blake wanted to do was watch a movie and he chose Catch Me if You Can. We had already seen it, years ago, but the kids had not. They enjoyed it, they couldn’t believe how much that guy got away with before he was caught. Kind of crazy.

We pack up and move to Texas tomorrow.

Sonya