New Orleans Day One

Arriving Wednesday afternoon, TJ headed off to his first workshop while the girls and I settled into our room and explored the hotel. We were right downtown along the border of the French Quarter on Canal. It is a very busy "business" hotel which holds lots of conferences. We didn't see a whole lot of children there. But, we enjoyed our view from our 31st floor window. We had a fabulous view of the Mighty Mississippi. Jaylyn and I had already traced the Mississippi River on a map earlier this year, so it was fun to revisit that and connect how long it took us to get down here and really what a big river it is. Exploring the pool deck/outdoor lounge area.

After our exploration, we rested a bit and waited for TJ to come back and take us to dinner. We met up with our friend, Jared, and started off at a little place for some Po Boy's. I had a roast beef Po Boy and TJ had a shrimp Po Boy. This was the beginning of lots of good food and unique New Orleans experiences.

We followed Jared back to his house in the city (Metairie) and then he hopped in our van to give us a brief tour of some areas. Jared actually was in seminary down here when Katrina hit and now works for First Baptist New Orleans coordinating volunteer groups that come down to rehab homes and help with the restoration of the city. He was able to fill us in on the area and the affects of Katrina. Their house was actually a home that was flooded at that time and has been gutted and redone. They bought it about a year ago. He said a lot of young families have been moving into the city and taking advantage of the opportunity for starting new businesses, etc. It is an adorable house. He showed us pictures from the previous owners and where the water came up. The house next door actually still has the big spray paint X that was painted on all of the homes that were affected by the water. Another tidbit for your enjoyment, one of the guys from the "Imagination Movers" (kid show) used to live just down the street from Jared’s family. :-)
A couple other people you may know that frequent this city is Brad Pitt who has a home there and happens to be helping people rebuild some of their homes here and Emeril (who apparently was NOT friendly to Jared at their chance meeting). One of Jared’s friends saw Mandy Moore here while we were in town as she is in the area doing a movie. We actually drove by an area with lots of “Hollywood” Trucks like they were their for a set of some movie. (I couldn't quite get my camera out fast enough, but I did catch a quick shot. Jared said that was the same area that his friend had seen Mandy Moore. New Orleans is a location for many movies and he said there have been quite a few recently shooting around the city. Sidenote – we drove near the big white Benjamin Button house which Jared says is for sale for $2.5 million. Any takers???

Some other possibly interesting facts: Jared’s church was newly built a year before Katrina and just happened to avoid the flooding. The waters came very close to the building. So, they were able to set up help stations and now some other churches and schools have been using their building as many places continue to need rehabbed. He said about only about half of the 100,000 homes that were damaged in Katrina have been restored.

The girls love trips and hotels and exploring new places. So, we were off to a good start.

New Orleans

TJ had a work conference in New Olreans and we took advantage of the opportunity to make it a family trip. Even though New Orleans is not always known as a "family friendly" spot, we still enjoyed our time and found that there are many great family activities there. We also have college friends who live there. Unfortunately Melissa and their daughters were visiting family in Illinois, but Jared was around to be our personal tour guide and he really added a lot to our enjoyment of this city. Thanks Jared for sharing your time and random New Orleans knowledge. :-)

Our view of the St. Louis Cathedral from a restaurant.

Pantry

As most of you readers know, our house is old and even though we have tackled quite a few projects, there are many more ahead of us. And then, there are always those projects that we have done, but never quite finished all of the way. Some little things here and there are usually left and never finished. Such is the life in this old house. There is also the matter of never being able to just go to the home improvement store and pick up what you need to accomplish your project because nothing in this house is standard size. I guess part of having home character means building character in the home owners by having them go to numerous home improvement stores and talking to as many clueless "helpers" as possible until you want to scream when trying to find doors and tubs and shelves, etc. that might actually fit in our house. We ALWAYS have to special order. Although, one of my favorite moments was when we were trying to order a tub and the "young helper" was going up and down reading all of the tub sizes in their store to find the size we needed. Obviously he didn't know much about tubs and had obviously not been through our "character training" because we were trying to tell him that we had ALREADY been down this road and NO ONE carries such a small tub and he needed to order it, which is why we were there to have them ORDER ONE!!!!!!! Ok, so maybe I need a little more character training. (We have also learned to just go to the local hometown home improvement store because they actually know what they are talking about.)
Ok, so now I have a whole post and have not even discussed anything regarding the title of my post. :-) Well, the pantry has been irritating me since we put the air conditioning in the house. They had to use part of the pantry to put duct work in and so my shelves did not fit in properly. Well, TJ was sweet and made a temporary fix for me. This not only involved character building for me, but great feats of balancing acts. Because there were only a few temporary shelves - not enough to hold everything AND since they were temporary, they were not really secure. So, I had to be careful where I put the bag of flour or how I placed the items on the shelves or they would all fall out. So, here is a picture of the pantry shelves at their worst.

Ok, this side is not at its worst. Just picture me standing there removing the flour to bake and these shelves falling out and dumping all of my stuff everywhere. I guess they were balanced here. Although, still missing the lower shelf.

This side is looking pretty bad. Notice shelves not going all the way across the back wall. Also the middle shelves had already dumped the contents onto the pile of stuff on the temporary plastic drawers I put in there. Ugh!!!

Well, my sweet husband finally took pity on me and scrounged up some time to fix the shelves so I actually had the full shelves and they would NOT dump all my stuff back out at me. Actually we went through the whole home improvement store thing again first. We were thinking we might actually get the wire shelves and get those in there looking all nice. Well, once again should I take you through the cycle. Ok, look at all of the stuff in the shelving aisle. Hmmmm, better check with someone first. "Helper" giving us a blank stare and walking back and forth staring at products. "What is your measurements???" Hmmmmmm . . . grab another "helper". He seemed to know what he was talking about although did not bother to look at measurements and see that we were "special". "Oh, just look on the website. You type in your measurements and it prints up the exact shelves, etc. that you need." Ok, we will try that. Sure! Of course, it is not for an old pantry that has air conditioning duct work running through the middle. It will only do that for boring regular pantries. But, we did notice that there were not ANY size depth shelves that could be fit in our pantry anyway. So, we add the pantry to our character building hall of fame and get the old wooden shelves out and recover with contact paper the old fashioned way. Handy husband works and works and cuts and drills and VOILA!!! I have a fully functioning pantry back. Yippee!!! You have NO IDEA what a relief and sense of joy that one can receive from returning a pantry from eight years of pitiful into a fully functioning pantry with ROOM and shelves that do not need super circus like balancing talent. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!
Hooray, an extra shelf in bottom and the flour can safely be placed in any position on the shelf!

Shelves all the way across the back, full shelves all the way down. I even have room for MORE! :-)

Oh, that was a happy day in this old house. Who needs Norm? I have TJ. Hee hee!

Photo Shoot

These are a few pictures from a while back. Jaylyn was having a "photo shoot" out on the porch with Adley while Leighton was entertained watching through the window.

Say, "Cheese".


The Photographer


"CHEESE!"


Hey in there!

"Hi, Baby!"

Nina is Home

A while back I had posted about our friends who were going through lots of adoption craziness to get their daughter Nina home from Kazakhstan. Well, Saturday we were able to join the crowd at the airport to welcome them home with their little cutie! And I must say she is BEAUTIFUL! Another friend, Jan, had brought red, white and blue balloons and Nina's big brother Nick was showing her the balloons and she was just squealing and laughing like they had been playing together all along. It was super sweet. They do have their blog up and open to all again. You can see posts from this last time in Kazakhstan. They haven't posted pictures from home yet, but it sounds like that is because Nina was catching up on some peaceful sleep in her forever home! http://thelockwoodladandlassies.blogspot.com

Adley goes to the Dentist

We scheduled Adley to make her first dentist appointment. She was not really wanting to go. But, thankfully her big sister Jaylyn (who has now finally settled into the whole dentist thing) was brave and helpful! Jaylyn showed her how easy the x-rays were and all of the cleaning stuff. Then, it was Adley's turn. She did the x-rays fine and Jaylyn held her hand in the chair for the cleaning part. What a difference it makes when there is a big sister there to help you out. Then they were even patient waiting on my turn and keeping Leighton occupied. We did find out that her thumb sucking is starting to shift things in there (as if we couldn't have guessed) so we really need to help her with getting rid of that habit. I'm sure that will be fun! :-)

Ten-month Comparison

Just for curiosity sake, here is a little comparison between the girls. 

 

Leighton 10 months

Our smiley cutie pie has grown some more! She is as fun as ever and learning new things every day.
*Eating "real" food in small pieces - in fact, definitely eats a lot just like her sisters, yet still tiny.
*Enjoys LOTS of foods including: animal crackers, cheese, turkey deli meat, peaches, BREAD,
*Drinking more from a cup
*You will often hear her "copying" what you say pretty closely
*Makes dog "woof" sounds when around dogs.
*Continues to enjoy waving "hi" and "bye-bye"
*Says, "hi" really well
*Still does her hilarious scrunched up nose smile at everyone
*Crawling and pulling up everywhere
*Claps
*Still enjoys "So big" and saying "Uh-oh"
*Still a ham!
*Still loves her sisters, but has become quite talented at shoving them out of her way when they annoy her. :-)
*gives nice and slobbery kisses
*so much more snuggly than the other girls - I LOVE how cuddly she is.
*She likes to dance and sing when she hears music, especially when someone is playing the piano.

Enjoy her many faces.  :-)

 

Easter Day

We alternate with holidays. This year was Easter with my side of the family. Family holidays with my family have changed a bit in the last few years. We have quite a few little ones now and that certainly adds some extra fun to the celebration. We went to church with my parents (skipping the Sunrise Service of course) and enjoyed catching up with some "family" I don't get to see any more. The girls really enjoy going to their church too. In fact, Jaylyn talked about it the whole week before. She was ready to go! After church we always go to my grandma's house. My precious Grandma has been under the weather off and on this last year, but was in great health and spirits to have us all over for lunch. We had a great time with her! (Especially she and Leighton!) Thanks for a great day, Grandma! So, with such great weather too, it was a super resurrection day!

Here are some pics from the day: (**Just discovered that after I spent all of my time editing around 100 photos in Photobucket, they have changed their program and now I have to pay if I don't want my photos down sized. So, a lot of these are not the greatest quality- Ugh!)

Some quick snapshots before church

The kids

We snapped some pictures with Hailee before lunch

A group shot was a little more difficult. We set Leighton down by an interesting porch decoration and a train could be heard, so it was impossible for Eli to look at the camera while listening to the train. But, they are all cute anyway. :-0

Hailee and Jaylyn in back with Leighton, Eli, Adley and Mylee in the front.

Fun with Cousins

Playing Around

Perfect twirling dresses and perfect twirling weather

Grandma and Leighton having a good time

Bubbles!

Grass!

Flowers!

Easter presents!

Egg Hunts!