Baton Rouge Bucket List - Easter Egg Hunt at the Governor's Mansion

     We had hoped to get to go back for the Louisiana Governor's Annual Easter Egg Hunt for 2016. We first went in 2015 but I don't know that we were invited before then. Apparently having a kid DOES change everything. With a new governor in place and CRAZY budget cuts, I really didn't expect an Easter Egg Hunt, but low-and-behold, on the actual day of the Hunt, we got a text message saying that it was on and we were expected to be there. There was some kind of mix-up at Dr. Frank's office. Since Session had already begun, Dr. Frank was in town, but poor Nana missed out. Matt did too, until near the very end.  This post is mostly pictures because well, what do you say about an Easter Egg Hunt?

    Thomas took a few minutes to warm up but he did eventually - to both the Easter bunny and the train. He wanted to ride the train every time it came back from its loop of the parking lot.

Whitney was a bit concerned about Dr. Frank's ability to get OUT of the train...

No lie, best picture we could get of T and F.

It seems that Daddy can even make the Easter bunny less scary.

Thomas's Easter hunt shirt for church! It was adorable. Also, he can still fit in those shorts. It's kind of  ridiculous.

Baton Rouge Bucket List - A weekend in Nola

We've been in Tally for MONTHS now but I am way behind on posting on our last days in Baton Rouge. I'm trying to catch up, I promise I will! Eventually...  Timing-wise, we're in March of 2016. Easter weekend, actually.

Many of the items on our Baton Rouge Bucket List included things that we could only do in New Orleans: go to the Audubon Zoo, eat at a John Besh restaurant, beignets.  Shortly after our 5K which was the day before my last half marathon, Matt caught the running bug and I was able to talk him into signing up for the Crescent City Classic. The CCC is a historic Nola 10K. It's always the Saturday before Easter. Since Matt ended up having Good Friday off work, we decided to go and make a weekend of it.

We left for Nola early Friday morning and started our day at the only place worth starting a day: Cafe du Monde. Thomas had never been there before. He LOVES donuts so we knew that he'd love it. There were HUGE lines to sit outside but an open table inside so we just mosied our way inside and sat down right away (Insider secret: the lines outside aren't for the tables inside the building.).

Not going to lie, Thomas LOVED it. Like, loved it. So much so that when he dropped his beignet, he cried. I don't mean just fake cried. I mean, meltdown. He absolutely LOST. IT.

There was still a WHOLE plate in front of the kid but he cried and cried and CRIED. It was both adorable and embarrassing. Luckily, the tables around us saw the whole thing so no one called CPS on us.

It didn't take but two more beignets to get him to cheer up. As you can see, he learned about sugar very quickly.

After getting all  sugared-up, we went out to the zoo. It was crazy packed but the weather was very nice so we enjoyed it. We had the Bob jogger with us so we just mowed the other patrons down.

Thomas loved the carousel but would only ride on it with Matt. I don't get it, but whatev. I'm a better picture taker.

 After the zoo, we went back to the hotel. We stayed at the same hotel that the Crescent City Classic was headquartered so that made it easy. We just navigated the myriad of elevators (y'all, it was SO confusing) and got our race goodies. Then, we checked out the restaurants in the hotel. THERE WAS A JOHN BESH RESTURANT IN THE HOTEL! Perfect. So many things to mark off our bucket list and we didn't even have to leave the hotel! After Thomas went to bed, Matt went downstairs and ordered way too many things. He brought them back to the room and we have a picnic feast of John Besh's best. We went straight to bed with tummyaches.

Early the next morning, we got dressed and headed to the back of the line. Like, behind 20,000 other people. Strollers had to start WAY back. It frustrated Matt to no end. He's not a plodder and he seriously hates getting stuck behind people. We were stuck behind everyone. Including a Viking ship. Matt decided to bob and weave and run over people. I ran behind and apologized as I went...

You know, runners have to stretch!

Thomas had a very relaxing time.

 We did it! In the rain! Matt actually traversed 6.2 miles and didn't die! Thomas only ate 54.3 packs of fruit snacks! We marked everything off of our Nola bucket list. Just in time to move...

Washington D.C. - Space, Tea, and Mr. Jefferson (Day 4)

Sunday morning, I went back to the Air and Space Museum to see all the things that I didn't get to see the night before. Oh my gracious, it was packed. Packed, packed, packed. I was also pretty sick by that point (like sore throat, coughing, headache, it was awful) and had no voice so I really just wanted to take a nap. I didn't want to miss out on things more so I suffered through it and warned people away from me by coughing without covering my mouth.  To get away from the crowds, I bought a ticket without using words for a video in the planetarium. I wanted to see an IMAX but missed it by an hour because my watch was still on Louisiana time. Instead, I experienced about thirty minutes of Whoopi Goldberg explaining star formation to me before I had to leave because I was coughing like Edgar Allen Poe's child bride. 

After the Air and Space fiasco, I went back to the hotel and took a nap. I had to rest. BECAUSE... We had reservations for tea at the Willard. We were serenaded by a harpist as we ate and drank our way through scones, orange scented salmon mousse, and cheesecake parfaits. Oh my goodness. Matt had never had high tea before but I think he is a convert. He was the only male in the place but he didn't care one bit. 

After tea, we went back to the hotel to change into more comfortable clothes (we ate a lot!) and headed back out to the Jefferson Memorial which was a pretty far piece from the other monuments which weren't that far from us.  Just as we rushed to get to Lincoln by sunrise, we rushed to get to Jefferson before the sun went down.

This picture is a lie. We look close to it, we weren't. It took forever to get there. In fact, we are still trying to get there now, four months out.


We finally made it. I didn't expect to get to go to the Jefferson Memorial so I didn't do any research on it. I had no expectations.

My favorite part?

Facetiming with Thomas on the steps as the sun went down.
He was happy to see us, but mad that we weren't there. He cried. I cried. People stared.

Then we went to a burger place and then back to the hotel to pack up and sleep.

The next day, we flew home! But our little boy wasn't at home when we got there. Seriously.

He was at school. His nana had him for four days and needed a break, so she took him to school for the day. He got home about ten minutes after we got there. And baby boy couldn't wait to see his daddy. What you see here is Thomas kissing Matt through the car window. Window rolled up, of course.

Thomas didn't really care that I was home, but man, I was so glad to see him. Then I went to the doctor. 

Yay! D.C. is finished. Now to catch up on the four months that have elapsed since we went and I started writing this series.... 

Washington D.C. - Shopping, Milk, and the Stars (Day 3)

Saturday morning in D.C. is far different from the workweek. Fewer people in the early morning and a larger number of homeless and beggars in the afternoon. First thing Saturday morning was breakfast with the business manager of Matt's new boss. We ate at Old Ebbit Grill. Apparently it used to be the oldest saloon in D.C. but I don't know about that - I ordered corned beef hash. I figured, when it Rome... It was okay. Meeting with the manager was also okay. It was very interesting to hear his thoughts on the business side of the future of Matt's chosen profession. Enough of that. 

After breakfast, we all went our separate ways - Matt back to the conference, the manager to the subway, and me to the mall. Well, mallS. I went to the National Mall first to see if I could get tickets to the Washington Monument for that day.  I did, by the way. Then, I made a stop into the Smithsonian Castle to see the sights and gardens. The gardens were slightly marred by all the boy scouts, but I guess that couldn't be helped. It was a Saturday, after all. 

The Smithsonian Castle. 

After seeing the castle and grounds, I went to the National Museum of the American Indian. It was very well done. I wish I had had time to explore more of it. It was early and all the other tourists were are the Air and Space museum so I was one of only about a dozen people in the place. After exploring for about an hour, I walked back to meet Matt in Chinatown for some real Chinese food as an early lunch. Look how neat! This is the entrance to Chinatown. All of the businesses have to have their names written in Chinese characters, as well as English. I wonder how many of them are correct. We didn't eat Chinese because the place we were headed to was closed, but we did stumble on a Vietnamese place that Matt talked me into. I'm not a huge fan, but he is a sucker for banh mi. The food was fine, but I didn't love it.   

Know what I do love? Ice cream. After I walked Matt back out to his conference, I went window shopping and stumbled across a Milk Bar. Lemme tell you about it. Milk Bar does interesting things with dairy. This is soft serve ice cream that tastes like the milk in the bottom of the bowl after you eat all the frosted flakes. I may have eaten ice cream while walking through 40 degree weather. It was so worth the frozen mouth that I got from it. 

 I also bought a compost cookie (chocolate, pretzels, potato chips, and other stuff that works perfectly with the salty-sweet scheme), birthday cake truffles, and a slice of crack pie (think butter. glorious butter).  I only ate the ice cream that day. I swear. 

After indulging in chewable milk and not buying anything while shopping, I met Matt to go to the top of the Washington monument. We waited a long time, took a super small elevator to the top, and then rode the elevator back down.  While at the top, we looked out the windows. Here, if you look out the window between us you can see the White House. 

After the monument, we got gussied up again and went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The museum was closed to the public, but open by invitation only from another one of those big pharm companies. Oh. My. Goodness. Where the dinosaur museum let me down, this one far exceeded my expectations. The party was catered by someone who knows how to cater. 

I won't do it justice by describing it, so I won't. Until I get to the end. We had free reign to go wherever we wanted. We got there early so there weren't many people, but even when there were a lot of people, it wasn't that many. It didn't take away from the experience at all. 

Dessert was spectacular. There were a bunch of little stations with different desserts. One station had sweet shooters of cheesecake and banana pudding. Another had artisan ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. Another had cake. Glorious cake.  I could have stayed there all night.  But we didn't.  We had to leave to get to a second dinner with the dermopath from the night before. This one was outside of DC and we were two of five guests. It took forever to get there, the food was weird, but the company was great. We also got in the wrong Uber at 11:00 at night, but that's a story that I'm just not emotionally prepared to tell.  

By the time we got safely back to the hotel, it was Sunday and the day before we got to go home. I mean, we had to leave. 

Washington D.C. - Freedom, Death, and Wax (Day 2)

 Day Two in D.C. was when Matt and I split up. First, we went on a guided tour of the National Archives. No pictures though - none were allowed. Neither was mace. The girls in ahead of us in the security line obviously didn't read the rules on the website like I did a million times. The National Archives are where the original (we didn't see the map on the back...) Declaration of Independence is kept, along with the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. The room looks very similar to that used in the Nick Cage movie whose name escapes me right now, but was not nearly as bright. It was actually hard to see because of how dim it was. I had to pull my glasses back out and almost got body slammed by a guard. Those American History people are strict. National Treasure. That's the Nick Cage movie.

 We didn't have a lot of time at the Archives because Matt was there for a conference, so after seeing the Constitution - he went conferencing and I just went. My first stop was the National Gallery of Art. I took pictures of things that I thought Matt might like to see and things that I thought were pretty. Enjoy:

I wish I could tell you more about the pictures above, but I can't. It has simply been too long and I have other things on my mind. I really enjoyed seeing the Rodins and more than a few Degas. Though the Degas may have been a little pervy for me. I'm not sure that I would have let my fourteen-year old daughter pose for some of those pieces. I guess times were a little different in the 1800's, but that wouldn't fly now.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that artists can go to the museum and actually look at an original masterpiece while they were attempting to copy it. I wish I could paint well. I may spend some time with Bob Ross while we are in Tallahassee and I have no friends or social life.

 Oh, oh! There it is. A real Monet. I don't know why I like Monet's works so much, but I do. Claude makes me want to go to France to see what he saw. Well, Claude and croissants. 

 After I got my fill of Art, I hoofed it over to the Holocaust Museum. I thought about whether I wanted to actually go to the Museum for months. Until I walked through the doors, I still hadn't decided. I knew what happened - more than most. One of my papers in law school was about past and current genocides. I know more about the Holocaust than I want to know. But I went in. 

I didn't learn anything new from an overall perspective. I did experience the personal tragedy of about a hundred victims. The museum highlights (is that the best word for something so awful?) snippets of each person's story during the three story exhibit. There was a name and a sentence. A name and a picture. A name and an artifact. Every thing - palpable or incorporeal - had a name. A person's name. The museum made me experience the horrors far more than any book has ever done.

Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children's children. Deuteronomy 4:9. 

 I am glad that all those people are having their stories told in such a tangible way, but I am not going back. I remember and cannot forget. 

From the Hall of Remembrance. 

 After the Museums, I headed back to the hotel to freshen up. Matt and I facetimed with Thomas and then headed to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum for drinks with the stars. Big pharm companies host events during conferences like this. One of the companies invited Matt and his guest to a grinner at the wax museum. We went, confused people with statues, and left. While we were there, we ran into a few famous people.

I helped George cross the river. 

Matt sat really close to another George. 

We left the creepy wax place to go to dinner with one of the dermopathologist (sp?) who has been courting the LSU and Tulane residency programs. When a patient goes to the dermatologist and has something removed, most dermatologist send the something to a dermopathologist to look at and determine what it is. Big groups court residency programs so that when the derm residents go out to practice, they'll send the somethings to them so the dermopaths make money. It's perfectly ethical. When I get to be involved too, chances are, it will be delicious. 

Again, I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but the dermopath that Matt and I like a lot (there are two that court LSU and Tulane) invited the LSU and Tulane residents to a private dinner at a hopping restaurant. It was fun and delicious (real size portions, by the way), and free. We were wined and dined and had a blast. My introverted self was exhausted after being at TWO social events, so we went back to the hotel and called it a day.  

It's possible that I packed a lot into my days because I was trying not to think about the huge chunk of my heart at home. I wasn't teary, but was missing my boy some kind of bad. 

Washington D.C. - An afternoon with the scholars and an evening with the snowflakes

Y'all. In case you couldn't tell already, our first full day in DC was crazy busy.  After our Capitol experience, we went to the Library of Congress through the tunnels.

From the second floor of the reading room at the LOC. 

There are two super neat things at the LOC - a Gutenburg Bible and an exhibition featuring Thomas Jefferson's library. If you don't know what the G. Bible is, google it. Lemme tell you about the library. I hate to be repetitive, but it was super neat. The LOC (and a lot of benefactors) is attempting to recreate Thomas Jefferson's personal library.

TJ's library

See those little book marks coming from the tops of the books? It is a coding system. A certain color was the exact book that Jefferson owned, another color was a copy of a book that Jefferson owned, and a third color was for pretend books that TJ was known to possess, but the book is so rare that the LOC hasn't been able to obtain a copy yet. The library that is being replicated are the books that Jefferson sold to Congress after the little incident that happened in 1814. You know, it involved few matches and soldiers wearing red....  That is how historians actually know which titles to find.  See? Super neat.

SCOTUS

When we left the LOC, we made a brief stop at the Supreme Court. To be honest, it just looks like a big courthouse on the inside. The only difference is that there are very few people when it is not in session and it is very clean. No prisoners awaiting sentencing here, no sir.

THEN... We went to the Museum of Natural History! Have you ever seen the animated dinosaur movie 'We're Back?" If so, think 'Museum of Natural History' in the Professor's voice.  Along the way, Matt complained about his feet hurting so much that I had to carry him. For a mile.

Just kidding.

About the carrying, not about the whining.

Anyway.

The Museum was a little disappointing, but Matt and I still enjoyed it. What I wanted to see the most were the dinos. The disappointing thing was how much of the dinosaurs weren't actually dinosaur bones but replicas. I guess I get it, but still. I wasn't prepared.

After catching a cab back to our hotel (I told you that he couldn't hang), we rested for a few minutes then trotted out to dinner.  I don't remember the name of it, but it was one of those super fancy, tiny portions, large prices places. Matt and I got several small plates to try but I don't seem to have any pictures. Probably, I took a picture, but the object was so small that it didn't come out so I just deleted it. The one thing that I did take a picture of was the complimentary sweet bites at the end of the meal. They look full-size in the picture, but don't be fooled. The macaroon was about the size of a quarter. The meal was delicious, but I left feeling hungry and poor. Not the best of feelings.

The best of feelings? Snow. Snow when you don't have to worry about driving or a kid catching a cold or the ickiness that is Louisiana snow. Snow flakes that can be seen lazily drifting down without any rain with them. Snow that falls on your hair and coat collar that is so delightful that you don't even consider brushing it away. Well, since the restaurant was about two miles from our hotel, we did have to brush it away or be collapsed under the weight of it, but you get the idea. It was dreamy.  

After we got back to the hotel and Matt soaked his feet in some Epsom salt and hot water, we crashed. It was like midnight and we'd been up since 4 a.m. to see sunrise with Lincoln. It was like a day in Rome, but with dinosaurs and snow. In short, exhausting yet incredible.

Washington D.C. - in the Wings of the White House and the bowels of the Capitol

Doesn't that title just make you cringe?  I did that on purpose.

After our early morning power walk to Lincoln for sunrise, we hightailed it back to the hotel to don more professional apparel and hot footed over to the White House. Like two blocks from our hotel. If not for some annoying parking complex, we could have seen the White House from our window. Speaking of our hotel room, supposedly, we had the best room in the place. It was no honeymoon suite but it was pretty nice. Top floor, corner room. All Matt did was ask. Sometimes it embarrasses me when he does stuff like that, but other times, I'm just impressed.

Enough of that mushiness.

Lemme tell you about security at the White House. In-friggin'-tense.  Not only did we have to request to visit six months in advance with all kinds of sensitive information (did they really need my blood type? I'm kidding, they asked everything BUT my blood type.), but once we got there, we had to have nothing on our person but our admission confirmation page, IDs, and our cameras/phones with very specific instructions on usage. We had to go through security with our IDs three times before we got to go inside the building. THREE TIMES. We were corralled through the whole inspection process so I'm not sure why the multiple body cavity searches were necessary (kidding about that too. The body cavity search part, not the three ID checks). And naturally, since we were in DC and you have to go through a metal detector to go inside the Walgreen's, we had to do the whole empty-your-pockets-and-walk-slowly-through-the-scanner thing too.

 Y'all.  See those portraits on the back wall beyond the velvet rope? 

That's Martha and George Washington. In the East Room. This room is where Lincoln and Kennedy were um, kept before they were buried. In Washington, the vogue phrase for that is "laid in state." I've never cared for that part of saying goodbye before or during a funeral but neither Mary Todd nor Jackie asked my opinion. 

Interestingly, that portrait of George Washington is THE one that ol' Dolley Madison "saved" when the British set fire to the White House. I actually asked one of the Secret Service agents about it and he said that Dolley didn't actually save it but had a couple of the soldiers cut it out of the frame and rescue it. Also interestingly, this portrait is a copy of the original. This one was painted by the exact same artist who did the original, but it isn't exactly the same. The artist intentionally misspelled titles of the books so that he could tell the difference. 

George and Martha. 

The picture below probably looks familiar if you replace us with a podium and a president. This doorway is where most presidents have press conferences and stuff.

Outside the front door.

Once we finished seeing about five or six rooms in the White House (which is all we were allowed to see...), we left! And caught an Uber (ugh.) to the Capitol building.  I know, you can't wait to hear about the bowels!

The capitol is kind of like all those buildings in Italy - being renovated.... scaffolding everywhere.

 Back when I was in first grade I wore those bows with the metal clips. One sunshiny day I was riding on the merry go round in a manner which was ill-advised and fell off. I the back of my head at the perfect angle and force to cause the metal clip to cut my head. My mother was called to the school to take me to the doctor. I was a bloody mess so the elementary gifted teacher offered to drive my mom and me to her husband's office just a few blocks away. Her husband was Dr. Abraham. A veterinarian. He was in medical school at the time but wasn't a medical doctor.

Anyway. 

He shaved my head, stitched me up, and I still have a pretty gnarly scar today. Shortly after that, Dr. Abraham became a family practitioner in Mangham and went on to be elected to Congress while Mrs. Abraham came to be my gifted teacher and prefer me over all my other siblings.  I'm kidding, Jeffrey is probably her favorite. But I digress. 

When Matt and I decided to go to D.C., first thing I did was text Mrs. Abraham. She and Dr. Abraham's office lined up our tours and suggested sights to see.  Once we got to D.C., Mrs. Abraham gave us a tour fit for a foreign dignitary. 

We started our tour by visiting Dr. Abraham's office and meeting all of his staff in the Cannon House Office Building. It takes a lot of local staff to run a Congressional office. I couldn't work for a member of Congress. I'm not sure that I could deal with the security searches. Then, we went through the tunnels to get to the Capitol. The tunnels are the bowels that I referenced in my title. Clever, huh.

Mrs. Abraham showed us the Exhibition Hall which has impressive displays of Capitol Hill since the Capitol was in its design phases. There is also a model of the rotunda where viewers can see the paintings (that are currently covered in tarps) that encircle the inner dome. Think Italy, but George Washington is Jesus.

We also got to go inside the Congressional Prayer Room. You won't see this if you go without Mrs. Abraham...

Know what else you won't see?

The view from the Speaker's balcony. First, why oh why does the Speaker get his own balcony? It's not like he has time to use it.  Mrs. Abraham didn't think that we could go out there, but she flashed her fancy pin and used her Southern charm to give us a look. Naturally, we took a picture. See that straight row of green right in the middle? It's the National Mall leading to the Washington Monument. I know, fancy.

We also got to see TWO voting sessions in the House chamber. The House chamber is where the state of the union address is given. We were spitting distance from Nancy Pelosi. I can't say that I care for her, but she's kind of a big deal.

After we finished our tour, Mrs. Abraham treated us to lunch in the Congressional dining room. Also kind of a big deal.

Once we finished lunch, one of Dr. Abraham's aides took us on a tour and then back through the bowels into the Library of Congress.

But more on that later... Also on Day 1 we went to the Supreme Court, the Natural History Museum, and a fancy dinner with a walk through the snow.