Are we cajun yet?

This week was pretty cool for us because we got to show other people (namely Mrs. Shudick and Renee) our new home! When the Shudicks got in on Wednesday night, we made sure to be hospitable (ha, ha) and bring home some fresh boudin from Don’s specialty meats since we’re Cajun food experts now. Seemed like they really liked it!

We got to go to Lake Martin with them on Thursday afternoon after a long day of making egg rolls, paper lanterns, and lucky money envelopes in China with the kids. Lucky for us, this nice man pointed out an alligator inches from the bank who was chomping on some grasses and a mama alligator with her babies!! They were the cutest, although those oversized lizards could probably chomp your fingers off. Later, when we were walking on the footbridge through the swamp, we saw another one with its tail up on the bank. It was a little too close to us for comfort for Renee...being in the car was preferable for her, although Stacey asked to get out of the car near the first alligator (and was promptly shut down due to a recent story of a kid getting his hand chomped off).

Next was delicious Deano’s pizza at Susan’s, which included Cajun Canaille (the Cajun French word for “mischievous”), Marie LeVeaux (a crab pizza named for the New Orleans Voodoo Queen), Chicken Fresco, and a Crawfish pizza…aah it never gets old. A great dinner with great people!

Corinne and Renee accompanied us to the Thensted Center on Friday, which was awesome. At first, the kids thought we had cloned Jonelle, which amplified their confusion considering some of them still can’t even tell Stacey from Jonelle! We went to Saudi Arabia with them, so we did some cool sand art and then blew bubbles outside. The kids were an absolute mess because we’d used a bubble recipe with Karo corn syrup to make them “hard bubbles” that you can actually hold with your hands. They had a blast with all of us, and we loved having some extra hands in the classroom!

We had some more great food that night at Lanell and Leon’s that night—she cooked an awesome catfish courtbouillon (translated to quickly boiled liquid). Renee absolutely LOVED the rolls, probably because they were rolled in milk and butter ☺. Grandpa Jack, Jonelle’s grandpa, sent down Polish sausage and peirogi for the family to try. It was delicious and it was really nice sharing something with them that our families eat. We had planned to go dancing or see a movie that night, but we were all exhausted and had to get to bed before our big weekend!