Weekend Trip to New Orleans

Last weekend Steven and I took a quick weekend trip to NOLA with some friends to see a George Strait concert.  This is his farewell tour, but no concert was planned for Nashville.  We had a lot of fun! This was our third trip to NOLA.

We arrived late in the afternoon on Friday.  After settling into our hotel, we went to Muriel's for dinner. We'd never been, but it was delicious!

Dinner with our friends:  Hope, Mike, Kevin, Charly, Me, Steven

After dinner we walked around a little and made our way to Pat O'Brien's.  Some of us enjoyed a hurricane while listening to the dueling pianos!  Steven and I agreed that the dueling pianos have become less impressive each trip we go on.  This time around it was obvious how much they rushed through each song, which just kind of took away from the experience.  We still had fun though!

Saturday morning Steven and I got up and ran 10 miles with Mike.  Yes, you read that right.  We ran 10 miles.  On vacation!  We're still training for the half marathon we're running at the end of the month, so we had to!  It wasn't bad, either.  NOLA is quite flat, so that helped!  We had a nice little route around the french quarter, so that wasn't so bad, either.

After our run we enjoyed beignets at the famous Cafe du Monde:

Then we walked around the farmers market and flea market area doing a little shopping until lunch time.  It was such beautiful weather!  We really enjoyed our sidewalk lunch.

After lunch we had a little time to relax by the pool at our hotel.  One thing we really enjoyed was all the music.  It was also the weekend of the french quarter music festival, so there was music everywhere and it was really fun.

Saturday evening was the George Strait concert.  We cleaned up pretty well after relaxing by the pool!

My colleagues, Mike and Kevin (and we're all wearing blue, haha!):

Martina McBride opened for George Strait:

King George:

The concert was excellent.  He's really an impressive artist.  60 #1 hits at 60 yrs old!

Our evening was cut short, at 12:30 am, because it started raining on us as we walked back from the concert.  We had planned to stay out longer, but it was pouring and I was cold!

Sunday was our last day.  We took it easy at the hotel until it was time to check out.  Then we all met up and went out for lunch.  There was one drink that Mike, Kevin, and I wanted before we left...the hand grenade!  Kevin was the only one who'd had it before and encouraged Mike and me to try it.  It was actually really good, super sweet.

Something Steven waited all weekend for?  A lucky dog!  He loves these hotdogs from the street vendors!

And he really enjoyed it...his smile would've been bigger, but I caught him after he'd just taken a bite!

One last group photo before getting in the taxi to go to the airport:

And while we were in NOLA having a great time, Addy was at home with Grandma and Grandpa L not missing us at all!  She had so much fun with them!  I don't have a lot of pictures of all their fun, but here are a few:

Katie came over and spent the night, and she and Addy played with the princess playdough set Addy got for her birthday.

They went to see a movie...and played on the arcade game there!

Addy did some reading and singing too!

Definitely a fun weekend all around!

Since Easter...

Since Easter, Addy finally colored her Easter eggs!  I know, I know...we just ran out of time!  Better late than never, right?  She still had fun and didn't care that it was after Easter!  For the record, I had the eggs ready in time, we just ran out of time to color them.  

We hosted 5 girls from an out of state Lutheran High School that came to do some work with our church.  They were such a great group of girls.  They stayed busy though, and we didn't get much time with them!  They stayed with us for 4 nights.  Addy LOVED having these girls stay with us, even though she didn't see them much.

Instead of using our 2 spare bedrooms, they decided to bunk together in our bonus room.  It worked well, they pretty much just had run of the upstairs.  The only problem was Addy wanted so badly to sleep upstairs with them!  Sweet girl.

Only one evening they were home early enough to hang out with us, and we had Jen and her family over as well.  Here we're all watching the NCAA tournament game:

Our only meal together, breakfast on Sunday morning before church:

Addy participated in the Easter egg hunt at church.  They postponed it one week since it was raining on Easter morning.

Steven and I started on our first landscaping project of the spring.  We wanted to expand this area and replace the tree and shrubs here.  Our garbage man ran over the tree last spring and the tree never really recovered.

It was a lot of work to get the area expanded, but it's all ready for us to get the new stuff planted.  We have one more area like this that we want to expand, so our work isn't quite done yet!

Addy and I planted our garden.  Same as last year (tomatoes, onion, green pepper) with the addition of two red pepper plants.  She was actually very helpful, in her own 4 year old way!

The sun went down on us pretty quickly, but by far her favorite part was watering the garden!  The digging was okay, but the watering she would've liked to do for hours!

Easter Weekend

Grandma and Grandpa L. flew down last Thursday to spend Easter weekend with us.  Addy didn't have school on Friday, so she got to spend the day with them.  They did a little Easter shopping for us and this is how Addy was dressed:

They played a lot, too.  Addy made a bed for her and Grandpa!

Saturday morning Steven and I participated in The Color Run with our friend, Jessica.  It was downtown Nashville.  We knew it was a sold out race, but we had NO idea how many people would be there!  It was very cool.  My mom and Addy braved the cold weather and came with us to watch.

A picture of the people...notice some runners on the bridge and the rest of the runners waiting below!  It was a really long line to start!

The Color Run (aka The Happiest 5k on the Planet) is a 5k (or slightly less) that has multiple stations of color that you run through.  The race volunteers squirt you with colored corn starch.  It's messy and fun!  

Texting and running? Guilty!

After the yellow:

Running through the orange:

Pink:

The finish line:

Addy and Grandma were at the blue station and threw their color packets there, and got some color on themselves as well!

Color was in the air!

Saturday's dinner at TGI Friday's:

Easter morning Addy woke up to find her Easter basket by her bed.  She got a "Horton Hears a Who" book and movie along with some candy.  The peeps were for her and Grandma to share since they're the only ones who like them!

Then she went out to the living room to look for some hidden eggs.

After finding 4 eggs, this was Addy saying how tired she was of having to look for eggs.  Apparently there was too many!  Four down, 26 to go!

Grandma and Grandpa got her the Share Bear Care Bear:

We went to church:

Then Jen and family came over for lunch.  We had ribs and ham with all the sides.  It was all delicious!  After lunch, Mackenzie hid a bunch of eggs outside (in the rain) for Addy and Katie to find.  They didn't care, it was fun!

Counting the eggs to make sure they found them all:

Checking out their loot:

The girls watching a video that Mackenzie and Katie made:

The rest of the afternoon was pretty laid back.  The girls played, the adult girls played cards, and the boys played some golf on the Wii.  It was a great day!