Vacation - Gulf Shore, Alabama

For our vacation this year we decided to borrow Brian's aunt's beach house in Gulf Shores Alabama. It took us 2 days to drive there, but we finally made it in the evening of the 2nd day (we didn't leave Lincoln until 1:00 on Saturday the 21st so Grace could go to dance class).

 Beach selfie!

 The beach house! 

Visiting Fort Morgan, which is just a few miles from the beach house!

 We hit the beach every day we were there, we all got really sunburned and had sand everywhere but these Nebraska kids sure loved the fun in the sun!

One of their favorite things we did was go zip lining. It was a little expensive, but totally worth it for them! They went between 6 towers and it took almost 2 hours. The best part they would say was the race at the end!

One day we took a boat ride to see dolphins. Unfortunately, there weren't many dolphins to see, but the boat ride was fun!

 Our last day in Alabama, Thursday May 26! We hopped a ferry to cross Mobile Bay to get to the other side and heat west to New Orleans. I thought the ferry ride was fun, I'd never been on one before!

It only took a few hours to drive to New Orleans. We ate lunch in the car then spent the afternoon at the WWII museum in New Orleans. What a huge place! Tons of cool artifacts from WWII. After that, we checked into our hotel and walked a few blocks to a cool restaurant in New Orleans called Mothers. It was po' boys, gumbo, jumbalaya and grits for dinner for us! Yum!

Vacation - New Orleans!

Our first day in New Orleans (Friday, May 27) was adventurous! We drove a little outside the city to a swamp and took a boat tour. It was neat to see that type of environment we don't have around Nebraska. We saw alligators, feral pigs, birds, and such. We had a funny guide and it was a good time!

After a fast food lunch on our way back into the city, we spent a couple of hours in the afternoon at Mardi Gras world. It's a museum/factory where they make all the floats for the Mardi Gras parades. What a fun place. Tons of things to see! Those floats are so elaborate and expensive! Some of those floats are hundreds of thousands of dollars - some have bathrooms! 

After the museum, we went back to the hotel and let the kids swim. About 5:00 that evening, Dave came and met us at our hotel and we hopped on a cable car (see above picture) and went to Happy Hour at a great restaurant for oysters and seafood. It was so good! Expensive but good! The kids behaved well and we got to eat and talk with Erica and Dave. After that we walked a few blocks and ate beignets and coffee for dessert. We rode the cable car back to the hotel and crashed!

The next morning (Saturday, May 28) we booked a walking tour of the French Quarter. It was hot but we had a nice guide and he knew a lot about the place. It ended about 11:30. The picture below is of the kids in Jackson square at the fountain.  We had lunch in a fun little cafe then browsed around the french market for a while. We got caught in a rainstorm and ended up sitting in a breezeway for a while, and it never really did end. We were supposed to meet Dave and Erica for a steamboat ride at 2 and at 1:45 it was still raining! I bought some ponchos and we ran in the pouring rain to the wharf. When we got on the steamboat it stopped raining and we had a nice 2 hour ride up and down the Mississippi.

This was a fun part of the trip. A 2nd line (small parade) came down the street in the French Quarter. The boys joined in and walked along and listened to the little band. It was kind of fun to see!

Grace is sad about the downpout!

A fun steamboat ride, the sun eventually did come out!

We went straight to Dave and Erica's house for the evening, and we actually stayed with them that night. They got a bunch of crawfish and we had a crawfish boil that night. The kids LOVED playing with the live crawfish before we boiled them - let me amend that, the boys loved plain with them. Grace wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole!

It was the first time for all of us eating crawfish and were were all (all but Grace) were fans. It tastes a lot like shrimp and Dave didn't make it too spicy for us!

The next morning started our 2 day drive back. We left around 8 am and drove into Arkansas for the night. We got home around 5 on Memorial Day, enough time to unpack and for me to get ready for training the next morning at school!