Cabbage Necklace!!!!!

I am SO lucky that my job coincides with the school calendar and I still get Spring Break off!!  Russell had to work, but Aunt Rissa, her boyfriend Nathan, Haven, and I made the trip down to New Orleans to see my family for the week!  What a wonderful trip we had!  We stopped in Memphis on our way down for a quick visit with Nonna, Uncle Ronnie, my cousin Cameron, and 3rd? cousin Michelle who happened to be stopping through there too.  I wish I took pictures!!  Haven had a rough time in the car on this leg b/c we ran into some bad construction/traffic that set us back an hour!  Little Mermaid on the computer helped for a while, but then the screaming ensued.  Thankfully it just took another stop for a feeding and we were good to go.  Haven showed Nonna and everyone all her new tricks and we so enjoyed our short visit there! 

The next traveling day was much easier as we got started earlier in the day.  We made it to Mandeville (north of NO where my parents live) and we barely made it out of the car before they were outside to greet us!  Haven went to my mom without any hesitation... skyping is working!!  She totally knew who they were!!  I LOVE technology.  The next day we made our way to Metairie where my Dad's step-mom lives with plans to attend the Irish-Italian parade.  Gammie was happy to stay with Haven so Haven could avoid a cabbage being thrown at her head.  Good parenting decision on my part, I would say.  Growing up in Louisiana, I attended several Mardi Gras parades over the years.  But I had never been to one like this!  In addition to beads, cups, and other typical items, they threw cabbages, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, lemons... everything to make an Irish stew!  They also threw random food items like mac & cheese (you KNOW we yelled for that), airheads, rice krispie treats, and moon pies.  Anything goes for this parade I guess!  There were also men walking in the parade with flowers, but to get a flower you had to give a kiss!  So my sister and I practiced some cheek-turning to get some flowers!  The parade started calmly with some bands, interesting characters, small floats, etc....

     
And then it really got going and I stopped taking pictures because I was too busy yelling and jumping around!!  I felt like I stepped back into my childhood... "throw me somethin' mister!!!"  My favorite was listening to my sister... "MAC & CHEESE!!!!" and "We want BIG BEADS!!!" and "I want that CABBAGE NECKLACE!!!!"  We really got into it (did you expect anything less?!) and came home with quite the loot.  Please ignore my awkward arm on its way to my hip.... but check out us and our beads!  And you can see one of the big floats on the back of a semi in the background!

Needless to say, our necks hurt!  Oh, and I guess you can see that my sister caught that cabbage necklace!  Ha!  So after getting home and cooling off, we admired the rest of our loot...

She is actually yawning, but it looks like she is amazed by our pile of goodies!!

I think next year we will bring this cute girl, but she'll just have to stay back behind the line of fire.  Those cabbages were like catching a bowling ball!!! 



What a great start to Spring Break!  Lots more to come...