Lagniappe Tidbits

Oh yeah, baby - seafood boil over at the cousin's house last weekend! Boiled crawfish, crabs, sausage and veggies. Then the next day all the leftovers went into a big pot of gumbo. Good eatin' yall!

So here's something interesting about Louisiana - its very Catholic. So Catholic customs and traditions are prevalent even among non-Catholics. For example, this time of year you see gobs of commercials for all of the Lenten special menus (meatless) that restaurants have created. I even saw a mention of Lent on a Taco Bell sign! You drive through a neighborhood and you'll see lots of yards with a Mary or St. Francis statue in the garden. On All Saints Day the cemetaries are full of people visiting the graves and adding new flowers. I never realized how unique (and wonderful!) this all was until I moved away after 29 years of living in Louisiana.

Due to the trip, not a lot got posted this week, but here are a few tidbits:

No Catholic Bible-reading challenges this week due to Holy Week. I'll be meditating on the stations and reading from the Sacred Liturgy instead.

You can read some snippets about our trip to our home, New Orleans, on the other site.

I put up a video I took from out streetcar ride down St. Charles Avenue on the Home & Garden section of the other site. St. Charles is a gorgeous street to ride down, filled with huge oak trees, mansions of architectural delights, and beautiful landscaping.

Confederate jasmine was growing all over New Orleans! It is so beautiful and smells incredible. As soon as I got back I started researching this plant, because I want some in my yard pronto! You can read all about it in the gardening section of the other site.

If you missed it, I have a new article up this month on The Homeschool Classroom. It is about creative book-reporting activites, so check it out!

That's about it! Have a blessed Easter weekend!

Preparing for the Big Trip

Photo from our last trip home - at the Audubon Zoo.

We are finally taking a trip back home. We were going to go for Mardi Gras season, but then my parents had the idea for us all to go at the same time and surprise my grandmother. We haven't all been together - my parents, my family, my sister's family, and my brother's family - back home in six years. So my grandmother is going to be soooo happy!

I've been working on packing not only our suitcases, but also the car for the drive. It is a ten hour drive so I want to bring lots of stuff to do. Here's what I've come up with so far:

I still have the folders I made for each kid for our last trip. I had gone online and printed road trip bingo, mazes, word finds, find the differences, the license plate game, a tic tac toe board, a battleship board, and a map of our route. I put them all in page protectors and into a folder for each of them. I bought dry erase markers and we were set to go! I had also found a travel Connect Four game at my dollar store.

This time I found travel Trouble at the dollar store. They also had a travel Battleship game, which I almost bought, but I realized that the real Battleship isn't so big and each kid could hold their own console easily. So we'll bring the real thing for that one.

I went online with Jill and we downloaded some new songs for her mp3 player for the car ride. Then I went online with Jack and did the same thing for his 3DS.


We're still getting ready so there's more to come, but for snacks here is one thing I am doing! Ha ha!:

Anything that can be threaded onto a string will be made into a snack necklace!

More to come on travel and our trip. If you want to follow along our trip even more, follow me at Twitter.

8 Ideas for Travel Fun

We are going to take a trip to New Orleans during this carnival season. It is a 10-12 hour drive, so last time we went I stocked up on activities for the kids to do during the long ride. This is the post from then from the old site {I am moving some posts over.}:

---> I went to the dollar store (can you tell I love this place yet?) and bought a felt coloring poster of two tropical fish for Jill and Buzz Lightyear for Little Bill. They came with markers and cost a whopping $1! I also bought a travel size Connect Four game for the kids to play in the car together. The game was $5. Finally, I bought a pack of dry erase markers for the next idea . . .