March 2017

March 2017

We traveled to New Orleans to meet up with Tom's brother Tim and some of his family who were there for a wedding.  Tim's wife Kathy grew up in New Orleans and most of her family still live there so we met up with them at Kathy's brother Gregg's home.  Gregg was planning a "Crawfish Boil" .  I have never eaten crawfish and have never been to a Crawfish Boil.  Gregg's wife Laura went and procured two large ice chests full of live crawfish.......  

 ........where Gregg used a water hose sprayer to wash and wash those crawfish to get most of the mud/dirt off them.....mind you they are still alive and crawling around!......

......he already had a huge pot with some water on the propane burner heating up, to which he added seasonings, some link sausage, new potatoes, onions, ......

and I don't know what else.......then with Austen's help they dumped all those crawfish into the basket and lowered it into the hot, boiling seasoned water......

 .......Austen stirring with the huge paddle while Gregg dumped in more seasoning....

 ...then right toward the end of the cooking Gregg also dumped in some corn-on-the-cob and some whole mushrooms.....

 ....oh my, it sure was smelling good!  Well, I still did not eat any crawfish, but I did eat some of the sausage, potatoes, and corn and it was yummee.  Crawfish seemed like a lot of work for only that small morsel of meat inside?  That's just my own thinking.  I was totally impressed with Gregg's expertise in boiling crawfish and he obviously does this often since he seems to have all the tools and equipment for the task and he seems to really enjoy doing this!

 In the meantime all the children there loved it when Kathy's brother-in-law brought over his portable fire pit.  They spent hours running around gathering every little twig or branch they could find to throw in the fire.

One day we wandered around the French Quarter, people watching, checking out the street entertainment.......

               ...wandered down to the waterfront for a while....

The Mississippi River is a busy place with working ship traffic and pleasure boats.

Tom's niece Megan and her two sons Nelson and Henry are being entertained by a clown making balloon animals.

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Oh yeah, one more thing that happened in March

               I celebrated my 20 year anniversary with Walmart!