Our Vacation To Louisiana

We started our vacation at Jack In The Box at 6:30am Saturday morning the 18th of February 2011

Here are the boys while we wait for Travis to get back from getting the rest of the gang.
We are now on the plane headed to Las Vegas where we will change planes and continue on to Houston
It is now Sunday afternoon, we attended church this morning at First Pentecostal Church of Jennings, Louisiana pastored by Bro. James Townley. This being the same church that my dad grew up in although his pastor from then has retired now. After service we went and ate with everyone at Frey's where Travis tried Shrimp Etouffee and we all tried Alligator which I did not like of course. Got back to the house and the boys began their week of fun on the golf cart and go cart racing and careening around the huge yard.
Travis standing by one of Nolan's old cars in his shop

Here is Dallas trying out the Go Kart

And Coda the reckless driver on the golf cart. Good thing it wasn't this one he turned over. It would have probably smushed the thing and I would have had to buy them a new one. EEKS!

Iris and Mom in the living room. See that huge bookcase behind mom? Behind that one is like a little room of bookcases. Oh what I would give for a room of bookcases like that. It was so cool!

Here is Coda giving Nana a ride, this was before he wrecked, brave Nana! He gave me a ride after the wreck and I said let me off, too scary of a driver!

Uncle Josh getting a ride

Josh and Ana taking a turn

Travis and Nolan

It is still Sunday but now about 4pm. Here is Fralan and Dallas. X-Rays have been done, the arm is broken now we are just waiting for a splint to be put on. We will get a cast later when the swelling goes down. Fralan was so kind, sped us to the ER, and stayed with us and had to jet to church directly after and was almost late. But we all ended up making it minus Dallas who stayed home with Nolan to rest.

Here is Coda sitting in the hospital room while we are waiting for the Dr to come in. I look at this picture and just wonder what was going through the little guys head. He was very very quiet that day after the wreck. Which for those of you that do not know, Coda was driving Dallas at top speed in the Go Kart and when making a sharp turn flipped the Kart which snapped Dallas arm and came to land on Coda's leg, which ended up being fine which we attribute to Travis immediately praying for it after lifting the Kart off of his leg. After landing, Dallas was hanging in his seat belt over top of Coda and managed to get out of his belt and climb out and run get us, noone knowing that at the time his arm was broken, because he was so worried about his brother.

Here is mom in the car. Fralan gave us his vehicle to drive for the whole week we were there, so here we are headed to visit Uncle Earnest and family in Oakdale, Louisiana.

We stopped at an alligator farm in Jennings. Here is Trav holding one that was I think 3 months old. We all got a turn to hold it. She also had one that was just a few weeks old and then there was a male and female in the large pen. The large ones were in hibernation so they did not move really. They go into hibernation I think it was like 6 months??? Can't remember exactly. In the wild they will roll themselves in mud and leaves and you won't even know they are there.

This is the daddy Alligator. She was prodding it with a stick to make it open its mouth and hiss which he did but he never did move.

Here is Daddy and Mama at Boudin King where Ana and Travis got to have thier first taste of Boudin. I don't think Ana cared for it but Travis liked it and of course the rest of us like it and have had it before. This being the same place my dad used to eat boudin when he was a boy.

Josh and Ana at Boudin King

This is Danny at his home making us a killer breakfast. In more ways than one. It was scrumptious for one. But that is because of all the butter used in the cooking process. I didn't know one could use butter as a grease as a topper as a filler and for whatever else you need to use it for. Haha But my, my, my, it sure was good!!!!!!! Danny and Elsie seriously outdid themselves cooking for all of us. One night Elsie made some of the best Gumbo that I've eaten. I think that was my favorite meal but I seriously liked that gravy she made one night to put over the rice, I could have ate a pound of rice with that gravy I think, but Red ate it all. HAHA JK

We were all observers while Danny and Elsie did all the cooking, but we tried to help, it wasn't allowed. How will I ever repay them, When they come back to our house, I don't know how to cook!!!! WHAAAA

Here are some of the Gatte brothers. Nolan on the left, Danny standing, then Rudy whom I met for the first time and Durell mostly known as Red on the right.

Nolan and Iris. We would like to adopt them as another set of Grandparents! :) We just love em to death! And they spoiled us to death while we were there.

Here is Dallas at the Tabasco place. Tabasco is bottled at a place called Avery Island in Louisiana. And we had the privilege of visiting and learning all about it. It was a good field trip for the boys since they skipped a week of school at least they had one instance of education. :)

My Honey and I

All of us showing some love!

Coda

Dallas

Here we are at the oldest Rice Mill in the USA. Another good field trip for the boys. We learned the process of making brown rice and white rice and how its packaged and everything.

This is an old plantation. We were not able to take pictures inside the house we toured due to security reasons they said but this is an outside view looking down to the bayou from the upstairs porch of the plantation house. It was very interesting to me. One interesting thing about the house was that none of the rooms were connected together with doors. You had to go outside to get to each room. Like the kitchen and dining room and living room. Kinda weird.

The boys outside the Plantation house

Here we are down by the bayou

Dallas and Coda

Coda and Trav. I just love all the spanish moss, its so cool looking.

Here is Nolan taking a rest while we all check out the bayou and climb trees

Travis and I

Me holding very tightly since he keeps acting like he is going to shove me in. The water there is just nasty brown. My dad used to swim in that stuff when he was a kid!!!!! UGH

This is the front of the Plantation house. The living room was the door at the top middle and the dining room is that door on the bottom floor middle. With stairs on the outside to get from the bottom floor to the top floor and an outside door for each room. We were able to watch a video of the builders of the house and thier lives which was very interesting.

Don't ask what is going on in this picture. Not sure why Coda was on the ground or why Travis is dying laughing. LOL

Here they are posing very nicely for the picture and not sure where the monster in the back came from. I think maybe it was a ghost from the house that somehow got into our picture and we didn't notice because it was not there when we posed. LOL

Awwwww Look at Danny being all loving. LOL

And here we are back in the Go Kart for another go around. It is now Wednesday. Dad, Mom, Josh and Ana all went to New Orleans. We stayed behind to visit and relax and get Dallas a cast on his arm. But we have the whole day for fun before the Dr's appointment so we are out riding the Go Kart again. FUN FUN, Now they probably want us to buy them one!

Here we are at the Dr office. Dallas now has a new cast. Check out our car (well our car for the day anyways.LOL). A 2009 Dodge Challenger. WHAAAAAAAA I want one!!!!!!!!

It is Friday night. We are at Di's for dinner. And low and behold Mardi Gras show up. LOL They were whooping and hollering and scaring us and messing around with everyone and all having a good time. Here is one that got close and was whispering in Vickie's ear. LOL She didn't know at the time but come to find out it was someone she knew. LOL Too funny

The Crawfish season had just opened and Josh, Mom, Travis and TJ wanted Crawfish. Can you believe TJ put away 5 lbs of them nasty things. Looking at them seriously made me feel ill.

Mom orders her 3 lbs and she is having a tough time peeling them. Travis says its easy. Pinch the head, grab the neck and twist and pull and there you have it. Mom pinched the head, and disgustingly it exploded and smushed and was an all around nasty mess. So how nice to have good friends sitting on either side of her that were great crawfish peelers. Carol and Elsie. They kindly had mercy on the poor dead crawfish, oh and mom too and peeled all 3 lbs for her. It was sick sick sick. And no I did not have a taste, I couldn't even look at the bug eyed little things. But Josh, Travis, Dallas and Mom all enjoyed.

Here are 3 of the sisters, Elsie, Carol and Iris. Elsie and Iris are married to brothers Danny and Nolan. There are other sisters but I do not know them although I did meet one of them while there.

Nolan and Danny

Here is Fralan cooking us some pancakes for breakfast one morning. Don't forget in lots of butter of course. YUM! ;)

All the guys went riding one day, it was just gorgeous almost the whole time we were there. I think they had great fun. Probably made Travis want another one now. :-0 Check out my picture at the bottom of my blog to see the group picture of all the riders together.

Here is Josh, getting all ready to go.

Travis all ready to head out

Moms birthday was Saturday and Travis' on Monday so on Friday night they bought a birthday cake for them and we all sang happy birthday.

Here is Macy, Avery, Coda and Dallas on Saturday. We are getting ready to head to the airport and say goodbye. Noone wants to leave nor say goodbye, we wish we could stay longer. But all good things come to an end sometime.

One last climb into the fun climbing tree for Coda

We had an absolutely wonderful vacation we won't soon forget. We hope we can go back soon. We miss you all down there in Louisiana. Thank you so much for such a great and wonderful time. We love you guys!

While there Travis wanted to try all the southern food that one can not get here. He tried boudin, hush puppies, shrimp etouffee, crawfish etouffee, aligator, boiled crawfish, catfish, frog legs, and a bunch of other good cooking. Dallas would only order catfish after trying it the first time he loved it so much. I stuck with the safe stuff after giving in to Travis and trying the crawfish etouffee, it was a terrible experience and I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth forever! HAHA

P.S. Just to let you know in cast you don't. If your computer works like mine you can click on any picture to enlarge it. Hope you enjoy