New Orleans!

I recently took a little trip to New Orleans to see our friends, Jen and Mark, meet their new baby, Jane, and have my very first Mardi Gras experience.  Our friends, Lauren and Andrew, were also there visiting, so it was a great time to go down and see everyone!  Poor Brad couldn't get away from work, so I had to have enough fun for the two of us...

When I first got there Saturday afternoon, we had crawfish...my first experience with those guys!  They were good, but a lot of work!

On Sunday, we spent the entire day watching parades.  I was amazed at all of the parades and all of the people.  The parades we have around here are so dinky, and I have never had any interest in going to them.  These parades, of course, put any parade I have ever seen before to shame.  

Someone explained Mardi Gras as being like a tailgate with beads and floats and marching bands, and that is really a good way to describe how our Sunday was.  Oh yeah, and wigs!  We just didn't have any football...

Monday Jen and Mark both had to work, so Lauren, Andrew, and I went out to breakfast and then spent a little time going in some of the shops on Magazine Street.  Jen came home early from work (it was her first day back from maternity leave!), and we lazed around that afternoon.  That night we celebrated Mark's birthday with dinner and king cake at the house.

I came home on Mardi Gras day, but we did spend a little bit of time walking down along the parade route before I left.  Everyone was in costume or decked out in their Mardi Gras colors.  People were so creative and funny with their costumes.  It was people watching at its finest -- and I thought Disney World was good.

I loved getting to meet sweet Baby Jane.  She is a precious little thing, and it was fun to get a baby fix for a couple of days.  She was a real trooper through all of the Mardi Gras madness, too!

I love going to visit Jen and Mark in New Orleans.  They are the best hosts, and they really know how to show their company a good time.  I can't wait to go back sometime with Brad so that he can see the city -- we will just have to plan around farming!

(All pics stolen from Jen's Facebook page...)

So

So, blogging hasn't been my greatest accomplishment lately, has it?

I am not exactly sure where all of my blogging time has gone, but it sure hasn't been spent sitting around being lazy.

Here are a few things I have been up to...

:: We have recently started a couples' Bible study and rotate hosting duty, and Brad and I hosted last week.  In addition to hosting, we have been trying to keep up with our homework.  We are using the book 1 Timothy & Titus: Fighting the Good Fight by John Stott.  Everyone in the group seems to like it even though the questions are not the easiest.

:: Our farm is switching over all of our computer software, so we had several days' worth of meetings with an IT guy from our new sales company.  We are also looking into new software for our piecework part of our payroll, so we have had several conference calls with a guy in California who is trying to sell us his product.  

:: Not only did Brad and I just move, but our farm also just bought a new office building that is adjacent to our packing house, so I am moving offices as well as houses.  We have been having lots of meetings with electricians, family members, carpenters, etc. to get the new office ready to move in.

:: Sanders has strep for the second time since New Years.

:: I dropped my iPhone on the carport, and the back of it shattered, so I had to get a replacement phone. It was all well and good until I got the replacement phone and the darn thing didn't activate correctly.  I got to the airport last Saturday (more on that later) and tried to call Brad, and the phone didn't even have a phone number in it!  Later it told me that it was activated, but I couldn't get internet or connect to the "cellular data network" until yesterday when my sister spent 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon.

Have you spent any time without a smartphone lately?  It feels like being in the dark ages, and I thought certain people were ignoring me...

:: Speaking of the airport, I went on a fun little trip that I want to give its own little post, but here is a hint about it...

Any guesses?!?!?

Theme of the Week: Business Trips

This past week (starting last Friday) has been full of trips for the farms -- both mine and Brad's.

Friday we started out in Savannah, Georgia, for the SE Regional Fruit & Vegetable Conference (click on the link, and see if you can spot Brad!).  Hunter, our Uncle Mac, and I attended Friday classes at the conference, and Brad and his family were going to classes all weekend, so we stayed the weekend at The Westin right by the conference center.

Friday night we rode the ferry over to River Street to meet up with Hunter and Joe and some friends, Molly and Joe, to go out to dinner and drinks at The Bohemian Hotel. The Bohemian was a really cool place, and I would love to go back and stay there sometime.  The food was good; the rooftop bar was really cool -- I liked it all!

Saturday Brad went to classes, and then the two of us had a little time to ourselves, which was really nice.  We went out to eat Saturday night at Leoci's, a great Italian place suggested by the concierge, as an early celebration for our anniversary (January 12) -- and as we were walking up to the restaurant, we ran into my parents' best friends!  Small world...

Sunday we headed home to find:

Turquoise!!!

On Tuesday, Hunter, Graham, and I headed down to Sarasota, Florida, to meet with our new sales team for the farm.  Although our farm is a family business, our sales is outsourced, and we decided officially in December to make a change in our sales department that had been a long time in coming.  We will probably be making some software and other changes to go along with our sales changes, so we went down to Florida to learn about our new sales team and how they do things.  However, we made a little stop along the way:

To the happiest place on earth, of course!!!  We went for a short detour to Disney, and after wearing new shoes and walking around for three and a half hours, I have the worst blisters you have ever seen.  I am about crippled, not to be dramatic or anything.  But we had a blast while we were there and got in some great family bonding.

We got home late last night, and today Brad, the kids, and I are off to our state watermelon association meeting...the business trips continue!  Have a great weekend!

Atlanta!

We went to Atlanta weekend before last so that Brad could attend the Produce Marketing Association conference and the kids and I could finally go to the Georgia Aquarium.  We stayed in the Westin downtown, and our room was on the 47th floor.  We had an awesome view of the city -- I know this is a terrible picture (I couldn't figure out how to take the picture and get the lights to show up correctly -- a photographer, I am not.), but this was our view at night:

We got to Atlanta on Friday in time to check into the hotel and change clothes for dinner.  We were all being taken out to dinner by someone who does business with Brad's family, and he was taking us to this really nice place -- Nicolai's Roof, on the 30th floor of the Hilton Atlanta.  Brad and I had done a little research on the place since we knew we were taking the kids, and we definitely knew that we were not dealing with a kids' restaurant.  This place had received Most Romantic and Best View rewards.  We were really nervous about taking the kids, and we gave them all a lecture about being on their best behavior, using their nicest table manners, etc -- and then we just kept our fingers crossed.  However, we had no reason to be worried.  The people were so nice.  They had nothing on the menu pleasing to kids, so they went to the other restaurant in the Hilton and got cheeseburgers and pizzas for the kids!  They made them Shirley Temples.  And our kids were as good as gold.  They got a little tired before we were finished with our meals, but they were great.  We could not have asked for better from the restaurant or the kids, and the people at Nicolai's surely didn't have to be as accommodating as they were.  Such a thing may never happen again, but I am so thankful for everyone's behavior that night!

Saturday morning the kids, my mother-in-law, and I met Brad's cousin's wife (are you with me on that?) and her kids in front of the Aquarium.  One of our fabulous sitters, Joni, attends the University of Georgia, so she also met us.  We had heard a lot of great things about the Aquarium and about the dolphin show -- which we had purchased tickets for in advance -- so the kids were super excited.  Add to that that they were getting to see their cousins and Joni, and you just about had a perfect day!

There were a lot of really cool things to see in the Aquarium, and apparently we got lucky that the octopus showed himself because usually he is hiding somewhere!

There is a room where one entire wall is glass from a tank that holds some of the biggest sea life you have ever seen -- huge manta rays, whale sharks, things that make us humans look teeny tiny.  I think we could have spent a lot longer in this room if we didn't have to make the dolphin show.

There is a tank where you can touch stingrays and some sort of shark -- I can't remember if they were hammerheads or sand sharks.  Honestly, I didn't get close enough.  The kids all touched a stingray, though, and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

A group shot of the kids before we left:

The kids had the best day.  They went from exhibit to exhibit just squealing with delight at each new form of sea life that they got to experience.  It was really fun to see everything through their eyes!

Saturday night Brad's cousin (a different one) came over to our hotel room to babysit the kids so that Brad and I could go to a cocktail party and dinner back at the Aquarium hosted by another company that does business with Brad's family.  The cocktail party was in this room that had huge, glass tanks on either side -- on one side we could see Belugas and on the other we saw all of the whale sharks, manta rays, etc.  I have to say that party was a bit boring for me.  Brad was in business mode, so I spent most of my time checking my Clemson app, texting my brother, and worrying over the Clemson/Maryland game since we were down by 18 points at one point in the game.  I hate to say it, but my eyes really start to glaze over when the talk goes toward watermelons for any length of time!  Thankfully it didn't last too long -- and thankfully Clemson ended up winning!  And, when we got home, the kids were all worn out and looked like this:

Sunday morning Louise and I took the kids to Imagine It!  The Children's Museum of Atlanta, and it was another great place for us to spend our day.  There were a ton of things for the kids to do there.  They played with these machines when we first got in the museum:

Then they moved on to the section where they had the "real life" sort of stuff -- the delivery truck, fork-lift, grocery store, tractor, living room, etc:

Right now they have this really cute fairy tale section, and the kids got to pretend to be in different fairy tales:

There was a stage, complete with costumes and dance shoes.  Sanders was very serious about her dancing, while Tyler and Gibson had a little more fun with it:

And then there was this stuff that was a mix between beach sand and clay -- semi-moldable but not completely.  The kids loved playing in this table, too.

I actually had more pictures to upload, but Blogger isn't cooperating, and I am tired of trying -- and by now you are probably tired of reading about this trip, anyway.  Suffice it to say that we had a great time at the museum!

That afternoon Brad got finished with the conference, and we went out to eat as a family at a very touristy location -- The Hard Rock Cafe.  It was close to our hotel and we figured it would be fine for the kids, but it was the first time I had ever eaten in one, and the food was not that fab.  But we made up for it by going to this all night diner afterward and getting each of the kids and Brad the biggest slice of cake you have ever seen in your life -- and of course, no one ate his or her whole slice, but that's the fun of vacation, I guess!

The next morning we were up bright and early and headed home...but I definitely think we will do Atlanta again, and next time I want to go when we can take in a baseball game and maybe the American Girl doll store!