Mardi Gras Memories

I'm so cute I get all the good beads.

When I was a kid, my family lived in Louisiana for seven years. At the time we moved there, my mom, who had spent her entire life to that point living north of New Jersey (and only a few years that far south) thought we were moving to the edge of the civilized world. True, in many senses, but it turned out to be one of our favorite places to live of the many places we spent time.

The greatest part of Louisiana is the food. Second to that, is Mardi Gras, which if you do it right, can be a combination of both food and party. And if you give that duo a zip code, it is, simply, New Orleans.

This year I wanted to take the kids to a parade. With much discussion about where to go, we decided to make a day trip to Galveston and save our hotel money to go skiing instead. Galveston has two weekends of Mardi Gras and while much of the coverage of the night parades in my memory includes people being run over by floats of getting into knife fights, the day parades seemed pretty safe. The noon parade during the first weekend was nicer than anything I've even been to in Metairie, Kenner, or New Orleans. Not as many floats, of course, but I wasn't worried about anyone stealing my stroller, my kids, or my stuff. So yeah for the Krewe of Aquarius.

See, party and food.

Emery loved the excess of jewelry although she wasn't as excited about it being thrown at her. Kim was pretty good about dodging flying beads and still getting them before our overly enthusiastic street neighbors grabbed them.

Alastair was pretty excited about flying stuff until the people next to us (really, I suspect they have been at plenty of real Mardi Gras parades recently) intercepted what he was going for. Seriously, in a conflict between an adult and a four year old over beads, let the kid win. Just about the time he told me he was just going to sit on a bench and watch, they started throwing out bubble gum. That was an attitude game changer.

Eat your heart out, greedy adults!

And about two minutes later, the Napa float came by and a guy jumped off, grabbed some mysterious object and handed it to Alastair. He wouldn't actually look up from his prize, but the kids has a huge grin on his face. Seven years in Lousisiana, and I barely got a stuffed animal in all that time.

After the parade, we went to lunch with friends at this awesome Mexican joint called The Original. If you ever eat there, get the shrimp enchiladas. Larry also recommends the Pollo Mole. The more I think about it, the shorter the drive seems.

Next up: the beach.

Emery approves.

Emery discovered sand a few weeks ago and was in heaven to be completely surrounded by it.

It really wasn't as warm as it looks.

Alastair was completely manic and kept running off in bliss down the beach. You may notice it was very foggy which led to a parental run a time or two when we lost sight of him entirely.

Yep, I just posted a picture of a dead sting ray on my blog. My blog, my pics.

Alastair was delighted to explore all that mother nature washed up on shore, collecting shells in between running sprees. He "fell" in a few times too.

He wasn't too upset about it.

And since he was already drenched and freezing, I used the opportunity to photograph the day.

I wasn't kidding about the fog.

It was a really fun day.

The loot.

In the morning, we piled up all the stuff to document just why we'll be making the Aquarius parade an annual tradition. The kids took home so much stuff (great for short attention spans) and we really enjoyed watching their excitement. I did notice, however, there weren't any doubloons being tossed out at all. I even gave Alastair the finger preservation talk about stepping on the doubloon and waiting until the float passed before picking it up. A hard earned lesson of my youth, I'll tell you.

Mardi Gras frisbee: kid friendly and economical.

And lest we get too nostalgic, the outright tacky side to Mardi Gras came home too. Note the frisbee: "Affordable Funerals--$675 Cremations--Medical Body Donations." My friend Christy pointed it out to me because I didn't even read it. Alastair then asked, "what does it say?" My response: "Happy Mardi Gras. And there's a bus too." Good thing the kid can't read yet.