Dance Class Parent Day

Today was parent observation day at Molly's dance class.  She has improved a ton since last fall when I got to watch her.  I'm not talking about her dance skills, but more her cooperation and participation skills.  (It may have helped that I threatened her before the class and also promised a Slurpee if she was good).  She was an angel and did everything she was supposed to do.  She had to leave the dance floor only a couple of times to come and give me a hug and near the end, she kept hollering at me, "Mom, I can't talk to you.  I have to focus."  Um . . . ok.

Jack was really good and sat on my lap the whole lesson, also.

Sometimes (a lot lately), I am completely overwhelmed and wonder if I will ever catch a break with multiple aspects of my life.  Lately Molly has been a handful, but this afternoon I was finally able to catch that break and have a great experience at her dance class.  No crying.  No whining.  No pitching fits.  It was a good afternoon.

Happy Easter!

Easter Eve!

We started our Easter Eve with an egg hunt at the care center where grandpa is at. It was the most complicated but interesting hunt ever.  Each kid had a sack with a number on it.  All of the eggs outside were also numbered.  The kids could only take the eggs with their number on them (there was supposed to be 6 total).  All our kids (Howdens and Binggelis) were in the 112-116ish range.  Molly is pretty good at reading numbers, but it was quite the challenge.  Jack just wandered and stepped on the plastic eggs.  The good news is that the egg hunt lasted quite some time which meant the residents of the care center actually got to enjoy it for more than 30 seconds.  The bad news was that in the end, we were only able to find 5 of our 6, so Grandma Judy tried to convince us to take some other number, but Ross said we were just perpetuating the problem and Molly wouldn't do it because she could see the numbers weren't hers.  Oh well.  

Humpty Dumpty came to our house.

We dyed him and his relatives.  Several never made it to the dying table.  Several more never made it to the dried-and-stickered part.  

We finally had 7 scary monster eggs that looked kind of cute . . . 

. . . until Jack and Molly attacked.  Jack is crazy and Molly just wanted to "crack" the eggs to see what was inside.  I let her.  They started to stink. All 7 went in the trash within a few minutes of these photos.

In other new, I realized my debit card was lost today and that I hadn't had it since Thursday.  I called the Smiths in Murray and they had it.  That makes 2 times in the last couple of weeks that I have lost it and some wonderful good soul found it and didn't do anything foul with it.  I must be doing something right.

New Orleans day 3

It's Friday.  I have seen this guy at least 3 or 4 times at this conference.  He has red hair with a well-trimmed beard.  The first time I had to do a double take because I thought he was James.  After the first time, I realized that he doesn't look entirely like James, but close enough that it is really weird.

Here's a picture of the exhibition hall where I have tried to gather as many free pens and pencils as possible and even some other good information.

After the conference today I headed to the WWII museum.  My mom has also been here and I have wanted to go.  It is part of the Smithsonian and I learned that it is in New Orleans because of the work of Stephen Ambrose and the fact that Andrew Jackson Higgins (New Orleans native) was the inventor and manufacturer of the Higgins boats which were instrumental in both fronts of WWII.

The museum basically covers the entire history of the war from the U.S. perspective.  It was cool!

Afterwards, I went to one of the movies at the exhibit called, "Beyond All Boundaries."  

Next, I had this great idea to go down St. Charles to look at some old New Orleans houses.  I found this giant monument to Robert E. Lee and waited for a street car, but after a long while it never came.  I also realized that it didn't turn around and go back like I'd thought and that I'd have to end up walking a ways back to my hotel when I was done.  So, I decided that was a bad idea and I didn't need to see old houses.  I started trekking back towards the hotel and at this point was starving.  I passed  a couple of restaurants, but nothing looked good (plus, I seemed to be in the super fancy expensive restaurant district, as well).  

I did the following, then headed back to my room for the night: bought a chocolate milk at a souvenir shop, dropped off my heavy backpack and exchanged it for a smaller bag in my room, walked toward the french quarter again for a pizza place I had seen before, bought a slice of pizza, bought my kids a souvenir, listened to some zydeco-type music while I ate my slice, was offered a shot of alcohol (strange), and walked back to my room.

This is a look down St. Charles while I was waiting for the street car that wasn't.  To the right of this photo, a couple of blocks, is the Superdome and these freeways reminded me of all the people walking on them to the Superdome during Katrina.  There is a museum all about Katrina in the french quarter, but it was closed.

New Orleans Day 2

I really am here at a math conference.  It is just not as interesting to post pictures of my notes and hand-outs as it is to post pictures of life outside the conference center.  I struggle with statistics and I have tried to go to a couple of statistics sessions, but this one was really boring.  The way we took samples, was interesting, though.  The woman presenting had these custom-made sampler paddles and a bucket of 10,000 bb pellets.

After the conference was over for the day I hopped on the street car. I thought it would be a fun little ride while I decided what to do for the evening.  It was crowded because it is the weekend of the French Quarter Music Festival and the street car drove 100 yards and stopped for 10 minutes to load and unload people.  I got a text from Robin from Arizona who I'd met the night before and got off the trolley and headed back to my room to drop-off, reload and meet up for dinner.

We tried to find an authentic, but non-fish place to eat for dinner, but when we asked some local girls, they steered us to an oyster bar.  We're weren't sure why they told us to go there, so we decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe across the street.  After dinner we headed to Preservation Hall and got in line to get in for a performance there.  My mom recommended this place from her trips to New Orleans.  It is a place that was established to keep the original old-timey Jazz alive.  It is way cool!

After the show I bought a cd from this guy who introduced the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and then sold the merchandise after the show.  He had dinosaurs on his shirt.  I told him I liked the dinosaurs on his shirt and his said thank you.  He told me it was his favorite shirt because it is difficult to find dinosaur print on shirts that aren't intended for children.  He gave me a free cd on top of the one I already bought.  The blonde lady purchasing something else is my new friend Robin, from Arizona.

After Preservation Hall we made one more stop for beignets at Cafe du Monde.  They were delicisous!