Down South

What an eventful (and long) weekend. It all began on Wednesday night when Bryan's mom, her fiance Nick, Bryan's sister Amy and Nick's two kids Christian and Collin stopped over at our house on their way to Louisiana for their wedding. It was Sue's birthday, so I made a cake (a la Martha Stewart).

Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I watched A LOT of Martha Stewart while I was on maternity leave. What can I say? I've been inspired. I don't have as much opportunity to experiment now that I'm back to work. But the special occasion seemed like as good a time as any to try out a new recipe. I ended up making the cake AND frosting from scratch. I wasn't thrilled with either, but everyone else seemed to like them, or at least was courteous enough to act as if they liked it.

In my opinion, the cake was too rich (tasted too much like pound cake, not enough like white cake) and the vanilla buttercream frosting was way too buttery - which I should have anticipated considering the recipe called for 5 sticks of butter! No doubt, I'm my own worst critic.

While Sue, Nick and their entourage left our house on Thursday, Bryan and I opted to fly. It takes about 16 hours to drive from our house to Monroe, LA, and that just didn't seem like an enjoyable thing to do with an infant. We left on Friday afternoon. Brick was a dream on the plane. He was pretty alert and excited just before take-off:

And just 7 minutes later, he was sound asleep:


On Saturday, we celebrated with Nick & Sue as they were married. I'll post more pictures from the wedding in a separate post. In the meantime, here's a quickie of the happy couple with Bryan & Brick.



Sunday was Bryan's birthday, and we "celebrated" by visiting the LA Purchase Gardens and Zoo. It's been a long time since I've been to the zoo, and to be honest with you, it was kind of sad. We saw all kinds of interesting animals - lions, tigers, bears ... a hippopotamus! But almost none of their cages seemed all that appealing. One of the stories we read said they animal had been rescued from a circus. I suppose there could be worse things than living in a zoo.



Later that day, the family decided to have a crawfish boil, only we left out the boil part. No, we didn't eat raw crawfish (OK, that would be really gross) They simply bought the critters already boiled. I personally have never eaten crawfish before in my life, and I honestly doubt it would bother me if I never eat it again. It's not that it was bad tasting. It just wasn't all that good tasting. And it was terribly difficult for me to get over the act of ripping their little heads from their little bodies and peeling away those icky tentacles.



Just now, I ran across an amusing article on How to Eat Crawfish, courtesy of Zatarain's. Be warned - Step 4: "For an extra mouthful of flavor, gently suck the seasoned juices out of the head, or insert a finger into the cavity and scoop out the golden 'fat'." is not recommended for amateurs.

By Monday, we had returned to Jackson, MS (where we flew into). We'd opted to fly into Jackson, which is 2 hours from Monroe, LA, because 1- It was cheaper and 2- Bryan's dad's family lives nearby, so we had an opportunity to introduce Brick to another set of great-grandparents.



The drive between Jackson and Monroe was pretty dull for the most part. The major exception was the gas-station casinos.



Note the standard gas station fare: pumps, quickie mart - complete with a tiny attached casino. Since we had Brick in tow, we weren't able to explore any of these treasures, but I'm curious to know whether or not they have actual dealers and table games inside.