Mardi Gras and a Gazillion photos

I just like this picture of Bri, Colin, and I walking through the Lower Ninth Ward. Bri's buddy Colin flew in from NY for Mardi Gras and my friend Amanda from Duluth flew down for the Gras.
Aftermath...
I thought Amanda caught a pretty sweet picture of this-in the French Quarter.



Amanda tried her grits 4 different ways....turns out salt and pepper is the best!
Mardi Gras Indian jammin....

If you saw Benjamin Button-the scene was filmed in the park 2 blocks from our house...
How did 3 superheroes get in our kitchen??
Yes, Colin did walk around like this. Come'on it's the Gras.

What's leftover of King CAke--a tradional bread/cake that you eat all for the month of Mardi Gras-kinda tastes like Cinnamin rolls.
Amanda's spicy shrimp remoulade


I was amazingly pumped elvis stopped to give me a scarf on the parade route.
Muses..the all woman's crew parade.
breakfast in the backyard.
Zulu-all African American parade.



Chinese breakfast we cooked.
Yes, Colin did put on ALL of our beads....and it took a long time to get them off and sort them again.
"GANGSTA's but what I call the Blues Brothers.


My friend is in the pink

Everyone brings their own ladders to stand on to catch beads.
I was a Super Gardner and Bri was just Super.

Chinese on bikes?
CAn you find the Minnesotan in the picture?

LIFE IN N'awlins...

Here's Bri training high school students purusing their GED and training...Bri has made walking maps for them to go through the neighborhood and survey housing conditions as part of a job training program, so they will have skills to use in the workforce.

We went camping here in Mississippi--I never knew riverbeds were so sandy!


Mardi Gras parades have started for the past few weekends. We went to see the Carnival Krewe parade....parades will then start this Thursday and go through, with several a day until Fat Tuesday.

Traditionally, parades all had men krewes. They all have to wear masks so you can't see their faces... (you still have to be mega loaded and pay to be on floats and have connections to throw beads). After the parades, there are balls for those on the floats to go to.
Barkus was today---a parade of dogs dressed up ....the theme was Batman.



Awkward picture of us....but at least you can see our beads!
Yummy artichoke for dinner....it's prepared here with bread crumbs, cheese, garlic..yum!
Bri and I hit up an awesome Spanish restaurant to celebrate an early Valentine's Day. We had paella and sangria which was soooooooooo good...

Mardi Gras 5K!!!

After the race, we headed out for a big breakfast down on Oak Street, where we were greated with live jazz at 9:30 AM....the singer was great!
This is my favorite part of the week....It's similar to a CSA, (community supported agriculture) but not because you have the choice to buy veggies every week or not and you can switch out the veggies you don't want for what others have left over--this is how much we get a week for only 25 bucks! local, organic, and amazing....
Each week, we get to walk through the line and take the amount of veggies/fruits requested-like 5 tangerines, 2 oranges, 2 tomatoes.....the list is very long! it's awesome because we get to switch up what we eat each week for what's in season. We cook a ton with greens now and discovered that mustard greens are very, very bitter.....
Bri's first batch of beer! Our house kinda smells a little weird sometimes, but it's been cute seeing him make his little science experiments.
This is our friend Andy, who is engaged to another MSW student and is originally from Brainerd and understands the Midwest! He's also very very fast...! He also rocks out with Brian on bass when their band gets together.
This is my lil posse of Social Workers I convinced to run the 5K with me...Kim on the left, Kerri, and Mandy.... Kim on the left-whom I like to brag about, is an Olympic gold medalist from 2000 in the 100 M frontcrawl swim relay. She swam with Michael Phelps when he was a wee 15. I've been runnin' with her the last 3 weeks and like to think it's why I did so well!
At the last minute, I convinced Bri to run this with me.... We hooked him up with running shoes and now I have a partner... He pushed me a lot, but I know he held back cause he's a fast dude!
The gang! I got 25.20 for a time, which is great for only running for 3 weeks! My last 5K I got 27.20 so I was happy and came in the 41st woman in the race out of at least 400! (Can you tell I'm proud of myself?!?!? Maybe it's the endorphines...)

New Year's Eve N'awlins Style

My sister Caitlin and buddy Colin Brady came down to visit us this past week. They were here for New Year's Eve and then a bunch of other fun stuff. We took them all around town in the gorgeous weather and took them to have Po Boys, see alligators (failure), ride the streetcar, see the cemeteries, ghost tour, French Quarter, Mid-City New Year's Eve bonfire, and a bunch of other stuff.


Here we all are at Audubon Park right across from Tulane.


This is Nicolas Cage's house which was the home of one of the most notorious murders in the entire city. The story of the murders and stuff is pretty intense. It's called the La Laurie house and any web search will get you the story. Oh, and the white circles in the picture are orbs...ghosts!


This was our guide on the ghost tour that we took, which brought us past the Nicolas Cage house. It was a lot of fun to see some of the architecture and just hear some of the stories about the city.

Our failed alligator hunt to the Jean Lafitte National Park. Supposedly alligators hibernate in the winter...stupid gators.

We went to Rock & Bowl one night too, which has awesome live music every night right next to the lanes. It was a lot of fun.

We also took a trip down to the lower 9th ward to see how things are and aren't coming along. We saw the Brad Pitt project and also looked at some of the Prospect 1 pieces, an international art show that stopped in New Orleans this year.


We had a couple of meals down in the French Quarter and here was a stop at Pat O'Briens, the birthplace of the hurricane, an infamous New Orleans drink.


This is a picture of the Mid-City bonfire that took place around the corner from our house on New Year's Eve. It was a lot of fun because I brought my guitar out and Brady was slamming away on Lindsey's drum.


This is the St. Louis Cemetery, which was founded in 1792 or so. It was really neat to walk around and see all the old graves.


Here's a picture of the Natchez, one of the old steamboats that still go up and down the river for touristy stuff. It's still pretty neat to see it going up and down the Mississippi right downtown.