Southern fun

After a leisurely morning, we headed to Chalmette, just east of New Orleans past Arabi, for their annual crawfish festival and carnival. It's a gorgeous day -here's the view from our front porch- and the kids were delighted to see all the rides, food booths and old-school games just waiting to be enjoyed.

I got a shrimp po-boy, T and dad got big slices of crawfish bread (crawfish and cheese stuffed into a buttery pistolette), and after hot dogs, the kids went nuts for cotton candy and sno-cones the size of their heads.

Little kid roller coasters are fun! Ticket booths are much more expensive than I remember!

In an hour, a babysitter is a'coming and T and I are meeting my parents, aunt and uncle at Sylvain for cocktails (I keep hearing pretty awesome things about it) and then dinner at Mr. B's.

Fab first night in NOLA

Our trip down felt on the real long end of the single flight spectrum but our bags were first off the carousel, our rental car was ready and my parents had already settled in to our rental house. This is a great house! We rented it two years ago for our first family spring break in New Orleans and couldn't wait to return this year. Freezing when we left DC, it is upper 70s, sunny and positively perfectly gorgeous here. The rear of this house is mostly glass and looks out onto a small patio with palms whose fronds blow languidly in the ever-present breeze. The relaxed umbrella over the table and chairs promises shade if its needed. From every nook, the suggestion to relax oozes.

The kids love it here too. Not thirty minutes after arriving, they'd gotten Misse and Poppy to walk them to get beignets and proceeded to eat huge quantities. T and I went to the market to stock up on provisions and secure the ingredients for the menu I wanted to make for our inaugural night's dinner: flap steak tagliata, roasted potatoes with chimichurri, and the Canlis house salad (from Seattle's Canlis restaurant; recipe was in the Sunday NYTimes magazine earlier this month). Everything was marvelous!

 

On the plane!

Kids have set world record for talking today, but we're on the plane and will be in NOLA in less than three hours! Food, drink, family and sunshine- here we come!