Visit With Cousins

My sister-in-law Jaimie and her two girls flew from Hawaii to Louisiana to spend several weeks with her family while my brother is serving in Afghanistan.  I was able to arrange my schedule to drive down to see them and stay with my parents!  We picked an interesting weekend to visit…right in the middle of Mardi Gras and Saints Super Bowl festivities.  I have never seen such commotion in mom and dad’s little town of Clinton!

The drive down was pretty rough.  We experienced the most extensive rainstorm ever…in nine hours of driving, I turned my wipers OFF for about 5 minutes.  Grace kept asking me, “Mama, is our car going to get stuck on the side of the road and will we stay in a hotel?”  She, of course, was referring to The Tire Blowout on our last trip down at Thanksgiving. 

Grace was so excited to see her cousins!  They played so well together the whole time!  Here are our precious girls Lila, Grace, and Emma:

We heard about the Mardi Gras parade on Saturday morning in the town square, so we bundled up and walked downtown.  (Which in Clinton is at most a five minute walk from any given location).  We arrived just in time to see the local motorcycle club ride in all their glory.  Grace didn’t like the noise, and I didn’t like the exhaust, but it was quite entertaining.  The festivities were late getting started and we were FREEZING cold, so we ended up going home before the parade.

However, Mimi had a great idea, and we had our own parade in the living room when we got back.  We even opened the door so we could hear the Clinton High Marching Band in the background.  The girls took turns throwing candy and plastic jewelry at each other while riding on a little car!  They loved it and begged to do it the rest of the day.  Grace is STILL talking about it (and asking me to do it with her).  Good idea Mimi!

Jaimie and the girls are flying back to Hawaii today, so prayers are appreciated for their safe travel.  Jaimie is due with their little girl Keira at the end of May, and Jon should (Lord willing) be home sometime in April.

Grace and I are going to stay a few more days and take advantage of some Mimi/Granddaddy time while daddy slaves away at work and school in Texas.  (We miss you, Todd!)  We’ve got some fun stuff planned for this week including a daytrip to Natchez, MS, church parties, and good cookin’. 

And despite the fact that I cheered for the Colts and my boy Peyton last night, I am happy for the Saints.  The loss was rubbed in when I had to endure celebratory fireworks while I was trying to go to sleep, but their win is an inspirational story.  And New Orleans really needed one more reason to party this week.  :)