Construction & Birthdays

Construction on Gracie's room has begun!  Yay!!!  We had extra space in our upstairs area which has been an oversized play area for the kids.  Gracie has been begging to have her own room for the last 2 years, so she is very excited about the construction.  She plans to make thank you cards to the construction workers and has already been giving them hugs!  :)  They have gotten this far in only 2 days and now it is time for the electrical part of things.  My brother-in-law Jared is an electrician so he's going to come this weekend and get everything ready, so that by Monday the workers can start the insulation and hanging the sheet rock. 

 They are building in a small entertainment center on this outside wall, so we can hang the tv and put away the xbox and other consoles.

This month has been a busy month of birthdays in our family.  Including Jesse who has turned 8.   I can't believe how fast his little life has seemed to fly by.  He seems like such a little man this year.  He feels for the most part that he's outgrown a lot of the kid toys.  He's not into the matchbox cars, figurines and such that he was last year.  This year he really likes his xbox games, sports of any kind (just like his Dad), and weapons.  His Christmas list includes a BB gun, a sling shot and a swiss army knife.  I think I am really going to miss matchbox cars and figurines!  :(

New Orleans

Lindy, my Mom and I went down to New Orleans for a few days.  It was a lot of fun!  :)

The one day Lindy and I took a tour out to 2 different plantations which was fun.  One was an American and the other was Creole.  So much history... which I love! 

Here is the sunset from our hotel room.

This is the Oak Alley Plantation  

It was my favorite.  It was just like out of the books I read.  The only thing I was surprised by was that there weren't as many bedrooms as I'd always imagined.  I think it only had 3 or 4 bedrooms.  It was beautiful though as well as all of the grounds.

 

This was one of the slave quarters.  So sad, but again it was neat to see the history.  It was amazing how small these were.  The whole time, we kept saying how we couldn't imagine fitting our families in one of these.

Lindy

and this is the Laura plantation, which was a creole plantation.  

It was also really neat, because they have a different kind of history.  They used the plantation homes differently than the American ones did.  In this tour, we learned that the family that had once lived here, supposedly had sent their teenage daughter overseas to try and have her acne cured, unfortunately whatever they did to her, ended up killing her.   I can't imagine, all because of acne.  :(

One night we stopped at this restaurant and of course we had to try a "Hurricane."  We only tried the category 1, but I don't know what all the fuss is about... I think it tasted like kool-aid chlorine.  Yuck!!!

Mom, me and Lindy

We were only brave enough to venture out onto Bourbon Street during the day and even at that I think we were on it for a block or two and headed else where.  

This was the view from a Mexican restaurant that we ate at.  They had a balcony for us to sit on which was fun because we got to sit up above everyone and people watch.  :)

As much fun as it was to get out of town and to experience a place that I'd never been to before, I was thankful to come home. 

~Jenny