"Son of a Gun, We'll Have Big Fun on the Bayou"

Do you remember that line from an old Hank Williams' song?  It's a fun song about Louisiana and the joys of living there.  It seems like an appropriate song for our Good Friday Crawfish Boil we attended with Amy, Darryl, and Amelia.  Their long time friends, Damian and Rebecca, invited us all to join them at Rebecca's family's farm.  Our hosts, Bill and Debra, made us feel very welcome and we enjoyed meeting them and the rest of the family (and there were a lot of them).  We arrived to find big baskets of crawfish sitting out waiting for the water to boil.  I didn't know they would still be alive, but they were and quite lively too.  There were all kinds of good things to snack on while we waited for the main event -- some pepper jelly on cream cheese that was especially tasty.  There were three long tables sitting out and I envisioned everyone sitting down to a plate of food, but then I saw that these were actually the crawfish platters.

The crawfish were dumped from the baskets onto the long tables.  It was 24 feet of crawfish, corn on the cob, potatoes, sausage, asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.

Okay, they are all there and look like colorful bugs on the table.  I've made up my mind that I will try them just to be polite.

Darryl begins to peel one for my first bite.  Bubba is already eating them as fast as he can.  He loves them!

This is it.  My first crawfish!  Not bad!  In fact it was actually good.  I ate about ten, which is not really a lot because in that whole bug there is not really a lot to eat.  I also ate some of the other things that were cooked with them.  I especially liked the aparagus.  Would I eat them again?  Probably in a setting like this I would, but I won't be ordering them in a restaurant.  I would much rather have a hamburger.

While all this was going on, Amelia was having fun with her new friends in the hammock.



There were children everywhere.  It was a nice big yard with plenty of fun things to do.

There was an egg hunt.  Lots of eggs to find

Amelia "poses" with Nana and Paw-Paw for a picture.

Later Debra (our hostess) brought out a basket filled with all kinds of treats and doled them out to the children.  Somehow Amelia talked the little boy next to her out of his cowboy hat and holster/gun.  She wore them for a good part of the day.  Eventually she laid them down for a jump in the bouncey house and the little boy eased up and reclaimed his possessions.

Bill saddled up two of his horses and the children lined up for a ride.  Bill told Bubba that the horse Amelia is riding is "30" years old.  Bill patiently led the horse around the pasture giving every child the opportunity to ride.

 

Eventually the adults got their treats as well.  As you can see there were plenty of desserts to choose from.  I brought the carrot cake.  Somehow it survived the drive from Florida, but I was afraid it was not going to make it to the farm safely.  The roads in Louisiana need some serious attention.

We headed for home late afternoon after saying good bye and thank you to our wonderful hosts.  They were obviously the type of people who think the more the merrier and it was very kind of them to include us in their invitation to Amy and Darryl.

There were a lot of other fun things over the weekend.  Shopping for an Easter dress for Amelia was one of them.  This was the first time she participated in that process and she took to it like a duck to water.  She picked out four dresses that she thought were "beautiful" and we proceeded to the dressing room to try them on.  This one was the winner.  Apparently it is very important how far out the skirt will twirl when you spin around.  I liked them all.  I'm glad she picked.

Easter Sunday we attended a church on the campus at LSU.  We returned home for a delicious lunch of ham, scalloped potatoes, brocolli casserole, fruit salad, rolls, key lime pie, and bunny cake.  (I didn't cook any of it.  Amy is a great cook.)







Amelia and I baked and decorated a bunny cake on Saturday night after we returned home from Chuck E. Cheese.  If your eyes are good, you will notice that the bunny has a third eye under his nose.  We were almost finished with the cake and Amelia said, "It would be soooooo funny if he had another eye!" So she determined that a proper place for a third eye would be under his nose.  She placed it there and laughed and laughed.

Saturday night Amy and Darryl went to a restaurant in New Orleans to celebrate their 14th anniversary.  Don't they look nice?  The picture on the mantle was done by Amelia at a painting birthday party.  I decided that she was obviously artistically gifted when I saw her owl picture, but later in the weekend she spent some time creating the masterpiece of Rapunzel which you see below.

At least she enjoys drawing pictures.  I enjoy seeing them.  The weekend also included dying Easter eggs, Chuck E. Cheese, and a lot of good family time.

The little basket of eggs above were probably my favorite part of the weekend.  Amelia hopped into the car after school on Thursday and immediately began to show off her "Resurrection Eggs".  Each egg contains a picture or object pertaining to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  She began to open the eggs and tell me the story.  The first egg had a picture of a donkey in it.  She told me that Jesus rode into the city on a donkey and the people were so happy and were waving "pom-poms".  (I think that is her interpretation of the word "palms".  The next egg contained a picture of bread and wine and she told me that Jesus ate a last supper with his friends in a special room.  Next came a picture of a cross and she told me that the bad people put Jesus on a cross and he died.  The next egg had a little piece of white cloth in it and from what she said I think she thought they tied him to the cross with white cloth.  A little rock was in the next egg and she explained that after he died they put him in a cave with a rock in front of it.  Then she opened the last egg and exclaimed, "It's empty!  He's alive!  He's not dead anymore!"  And that, my friend, really touched my heart.

I hope that you all experience the same joy that Amelia had when she opened the last part of the story. "He's alive!"