Po Boy Festival - Oak Street, New Orleans

Po-Boy Festival
Originally uploaded by stuflannery

Music, po boys, art, and tons of people is my description of the po boy festival. We didn't make it out last year to this because I was just too pregnant and grouchy at that point. This year we fought traffic and finally found a spot on the railroad tracks to unload Cohen and his 100 things. We squeezed through thousands of people and listened to music and checked out local artists. After walking from one end of Oak street to the other we decided on which po boy we we're going to try and we went with the shrimp po boy, which was amazing...even Cohen loved it. We followed it with a frozen hot chocolate by Blue Frog Chocolate Company. Stu ate some chocolate covered crawfish chips....I politely declined tasting those and kept a close eye on him to make sure he wasn't sneaking one to Cohen. I am sure that if the delicious crawfish chips didn't agree with Cohen's tummy i would be the one cleaning the mess....not stu!!

Mobile, Alabama with Grandma

Mobile, Alabama with Grandma
Originally uploaded by stuflannery 

Grandma Nancy ended up having some work in Mobile, Alabama which is about 2 hours from our house so we packed up Cohen and drove over to visit her for the weekend. We did some visiting, some eating, and of course some shopping. While driving out to get lunch on Saturday we stopped at the Battleship Memorial Park to see the USS Alabama and checked out the planes and ships.  The was really interesting and next time when we have more time and more diapers we will stop and spend the day here. 

Halloween New Orleans Style

Mickey Mouse
Originally uploaded by stuflannery

This was our first Halloween with Cohen and we weren't sure what to expect being in New Orleans. Unfortunately "trick-or-treating" isn't that big here....probably because of the City's high crime rate. However, we did find two events where Cohen could trick-or-treat and they were over the top AMAZING!! I was so surprised.

Ghosts in the Oaks was held in the carousel gardens of City Park (my favorite place in New Orleans). The carousel gardens has a story book theme and rides and roller coasters, games, everything you can imagine is here. It is honestly like being in the middle of a fairy tale. Tickets to the event were kind of steep, but the proceeds went toward a good cause and we had an absolute blast. Cohen went around, with a little help of course, to different story book characters and collected his candy in the bright orange pumpkin. Cohen was mickey mouse and Stu and I (in our last minute costumes) went as Mario and Luigi (NOTE: we were supposed to be Snow White and Buzz Lighyear, but we waited too long and we were left picking between two hot dog costumes or Mario and Luigi). Our costumes were actually a hit and we got a lot of high fives!! We saw another family of Nintendo characters. The dad was Mario one of the children was Luigi and the other was Toad Stool and the VERY pregnant mother was Princess Peach.

The next night we went to Boo At The Zoo!! I am so happy I purchased our tickets two weeks in advance because it was surprisingly sold out. Again with steep ticket prices I didn't think it would be sold out. I didn't think anything could top Ghosts in the Oaks, but i was wrong. This was the coolest kiddie carnival/concert I have ever seen. I can't imagine the time and money that went into putting this together. We took a train ride around the zoo...cohen was not happy at first...then he got scared and cried....but when the train stopped to music and dance of Michael Jackson's Thriller....Cohen was all smiles. We ate, we laughed, we danced on stage with Cohen to very SILLY kiddie songs, and we partied until we were all pooped.

This was the best halloween!!

Sunday Fun Day!!

My husband is the man of many projects....MANY projects. We had beautiful weather on Sunday so he decided to tackle a couple of his projects, and while he was cutting and nailing I was digging and planting. A few months ago Stu built a planter box for me and I decided to plant some mums...purple, yellow, orange, and red ones. Cohen played and squealed in his walker on the deck while I planted and Stu built chairs.

Fall Photos at Red Bluff Farm Folsom, LA

DSC_3110
Originally uploaded by stuflannery

This was our second attempt at Fall family photos. The first attempt was a fail due to the 100 degree weather forecast for last Saturday. I had went shopping for outfits for our photos and naturally bought cool weather clothes assuming that mid October might be cooler than 100 degrees....i was proven wrong. As bad as I wanted to take photos last weekend risking all of us having heat stroke and sweaty family photos was not worth it.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to find a pumpkin patch...this took a lot of googling, but i finally managed to find a farm (Red Bluff Farm) about an hour north of our house that had pumpkins. The farm was nice, had a few pumpkins and a petting farm. Cohen seemed to really enjoy the baby cows and pigs. We also took photos at City Park...my favorite place in New Orleans. We had so much fun playing with Cohen and watching his curiosity. He wasn't sure about the feel of grass on his hands and knees, which triggered many laughs from Stu and I. He's such a fun little guy.