as blonde as it gets...

A Whirlwind Week

Hi! Here to update you on what's been going on for us down south:

On Tuesday we had the luck of seeing the Maraists again (the ND alum and his wife who'd taken us to Lake Martin and Breaux Bridge) and they took us to see St. Martinville, where they'd both grown up. This was our real Acadian history lesson--since Mrs. Maraist is currently writing a book on Acadian history, we had some really knowledgeable people to show us around. The Acadian memorial was our first stop, where they have all the names carved into the wall of the first 3,000 or so settlers who landed in the area from Nova Scotia. They also have a huge mural of the settlers which was recently painted, and a descendant from each family posed for the painting. We also saw the Evangeline Oak, a huge famous oak tree that sits by the Bayou Teche.

The Church in St. Martinville was beautiful, and it was so old it even had those kind of pews where you have to open the little door to get in. After taking a little drive through the country and the sugarcane fields and checking out a country house of the Maraists right on the bayou, we headed to Broussard, another little town. We had dinner there at Nash's, a Cajun/Italian (an interesting and delicious combo) restaurant inside an old Victorian home. We had another fantastic meal, seafood of course, and we're just amazed at the generosity of the ND alumni club here in S Louisiana.

One of the highlights of the week was our dinosaur dig in Turkey. We made our own clay the night before and had the kids make dinosaur bones out of it (after getting to play with it, of course). The first class was a total disaster, though, because our clay didn't have enough flour at ALL and got all over their hands and wouldn't come off! We took them outside after that and we'd hid some "dino eggs" (big easter eggs) around the playground area filled with candy. We also hid pre-made dinosaur bones in the sandbox for them to dig up, which they loved...some of them were even convinced that the sandbox rocks were teeth.

They had their drama, music, and dance performance on Thursday, which was hilarious. The kids had been working on the play, called "The Legend of the Cursed Island," for five weeks, and they'd basically written the entire thing themselves! It was hilarious to see how they'd made their characters act exactly as they do. We got to meet some of their parents and relatives at the play, and hopefully we'll get to meet more of them at the end-of-the-year production.

Friday was a different day because the kids didn't come to camp--instead, we spent the day cleaning the biggest room at the Thensted Center with Daniel and Phillip. It was one of those jobs that is so satisfying...it was dirty. really dirty. We washed the baseboards, walls, cleared the bookshelves, the AC vents, the fridges, vacuumed, etc. Our favorite part was finding a perfectly preserved skeleton of what may have been a baby squirrel about ten years ago underneath an old fire hydrant! It felt so good to clear out the place and give it a good cleaning.

That night we had Stacey's birthday dinner over at Susan's, which was amazing as always! Mandy made an unbelievable birthday cake for Stacey (her favorite yellow cake with chocolate icing and raspberries) and we all celebrated together...great way to spend my last night as a teenager, says Stacey.

Stacey's birthday was pretty different from any other birthday she's ever had, and it was pretty darn awesome. Although we were hitting ourselves on the heads when the alarm went off, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:30 to get to Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, or "Pont Breaux," Louisiana. They have a zydeco breakfast there every Saturday morning where people go to dance! We hadn't yet been to the breakfast and we knew we had to get there before we left, and it was totally worth it. We got the zydeco omelet and some biscuits for breakfast and then just stood and watched the people dance for a little while. Even though it was just the two of us and we hardly knew anything about zydeco dancing, we got pulled out onto the dance floor by some knowledgeable zydeco dancers before we even made an attempt to dance with each other. We learned a little bit about trying to keep our rhythm, but we really weren't the best...

Turns out we just needed to be led by some experts, and we had our wish granted that night! The Oliver boys, who live next to the Comeauxs and are the sons of Mandy's friend Renee, took us to a cajun wedding :) Although we never did end up meeting the bride and groom, we met a lot of the family members and danced the night away! It was striking how good people are here at dancing--we couldn't believe we were in a place where EVERYONE knows how to dance, and can do it well, too!

In between dancing in the morning and dancing in the evening, we went on a bike ride through Lafayette, looking through shops and browsing through downtown. We got some chicken gyros at Cedar Grocery (awesome) on really good French Bread instead of pitas. There were a lot of flags hanging from the ceiling and we were very surprised to see that we could identify most of them because of our trip around the world at the Thensted! After lunch we got ice cream at Borden's-birthday cake dipped in chocolate, Stacey's favorite. We took the bikes back to Susan's and then went shopping to look for souvenirs and clothes.

We had noticed a sign for a mall on the way from Lafayette to Carencro, so we decided to stop and check it out. "Northgate Mall." Well, we felt like we were in a post-apocalyptic world because there were approximately 8 people in the entire mall and there were long strips where there were no stores at all. The only signs of life were a couple of Foot Lockers and a few stores without even a name. Significantly sketched out, we scooted out of there pretty quickly!

After a long and exhausting but awesome week, we got some much-needed sleep last night. We can't believe how fast it's flown by! Stay tuned this week for some updates as we finish up our last week in Cajun country.

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!

Charm City, baby

Hey! It’s only Jonelle…just wanted to give everyone my first impressions of Baltimore (where we spent the 4th of July). This being my first time to the real East Coast, I was a little unsure of what to expect…besides the crazy stories Stace had told me about Sherwood Forest (a cult-like, 1950’s esque, country clubish, really cute neighborhood for all of our dear readers who are unfamiliar with it). The weekend was really wonderful, complete with crabs cooked in Old Bay…absolutely amazing…and really fun to sit and pick with everyone. Directly after arriving at their summer house in the Forest, I was chauffeured around in a golf cart on a personal tour of Sherwood and the Severn River. This neighborhood is located about halfway between Baltimore and D.C. I got to meet a lot of Stacey’s really nice childhood friends, as well as her family, who were all really nice and welcoming – apart from them actually somewhat liking soccer, which I guess I can overlook. The whole neighborhood was so cute and they even had their own firework show on the 3rd! On the fourth, we walked in a neighborhood parade, and ate hot dogs at 9:30 a.m.! We had some more crabs for lunch then went on a boat-ride on the River.

After dinner (typical 4th fare) we traveled to Baltimore to check out the city. Well my first impression was perhaps not the most flattering, I thought the city was really nice. When we arrived in the city, just past the Ravens Stadium, I glanced out the window toward the car next to us, and saw a guy shooting up in the backseat. This was the first time Stace or I had ever seen this—yikes! I did get to see her high school, which was really quaint, and we stayed overnight in her house which was in a really nice part of town—not like my first impression at all. It was really fun meeting all her high school friends and seeing the place where she grew up. We headed back to the Forest (ha) in the morning and had a little bit of time to hang out before our flight. Stace and I went to Robin Hood Beach…yes this is the actual name…with Mrs. Collins and we relaxed in the sun and went swimming off the pier for a much too short hour before we had to jet off. The flight back home was essentially a 2 hour nap for us after the awesome weekend eating crabs, hanging out with family, and exhausting our patriotic wardrobe.

The big 2-0!

Hello There!

We know this is a bit late (2 weeks) but we thought we should tell you all about Jonelle’s birthday since she was the birthday princess (at age 20…while somehow still managing to look and act exactly the same as at age 10). We had to go to work, which we thought would be a bummer but turned out to be awesome! Who wouldn’t want to be serenaded by 50 little kids :] not to mention a breakfast that consisted of French toast and peach tea…an excellent substitution for blueberry muffins. We were a little tired because we had to stay awake until midnight, stargazing—until a possum attacked us, causing us to run inside. At work, every new class that came in sang Happy Birthday, and were well behaved for the birthday girl. At lunch, we went to the store to get ice cream, and ate a whole pint, completely unaware that the center had bought a giant pink frosted cake for everyone, including the kids helping out from Connecticut. The cake ended up being for both of us because Miss Jean knows us by face, but still cannot get the names straight and had Stacey’s name written on the cake. The entire center sang to both of us, and everyone got a piece of cake. One of the girls even made Jonelle a bracelet out of yarn. After work, we headed to the pool for a relaxing afternoon, then had a cookout at Mandy’s. Everyone came over, and Mimi, Mandy’s mom, made a chocolate banana cake…awesome. She also got some beautiful earrings and a lot of love. In all, it was an awesome way to turn 20!

Houseboat Pictures!

Scene of the Atchafalaya basin...streches forever and ever.
Us on the "party barge" with Mandy and Blake.
Adam's houseboat! This picture was taken before the leaves came in.

Austin

Okay--so Austin was seriously fun. We had a blast! After the 6.5 hour drive with no A/C (it's our own fault, we know) we arrived in Austin, which is completely different than anything that you would expect. It is very hilly and reminded us both of Boulder, CO. We stayed with Mandy's sister, Laurie, who has a beautiful house there. She had fresh Mexican cuisine waiting for us, which we enjoyed in the backyard by the beautiful pool! We visited then promptly donned our suits and swam for awhile before going to bed--we were exhausted after a day with the kids, a six hour drive, and swimming!

The next day we went to Schlitterbahn (which the German lady we work with kindly informed us was in fact a German word...duh...but she told us schlitter means to sled and bahn is a rollercoaster--sounds about right!). It was a ginormous waterpark not far from their house. We spent the day riding the slides and floating in the whirlpools and lazy rivers, which was awesome, and since Stacey had just gotten a waterproof camera we were able to bring it through the whole park and even down the slides. We went with Phillip and his cousin, Iris, and her friend, Kate, which made it ten times as fun for us because we got to act like seventh graders at a water park! It was a fantastic day that only got better with a stop at Sonic for ice cream on the way home :)
The crew before we left in our sweet hats...we were gonna wear them into the park, but we would have lost them of course! Jonelle, Phillip, Kate, Iris, and Stacey.


The girls in the whirlpool!

That evening we went to "Music in the Park" in Laurie's neighborhood, which was an informal show by a local band next to the lake. It was an awesome setting--laying out a blanket by the water and listening to music was exactly what we wanted to do on a night like that!!

Sunday was our day to venture into the city of Austin, and we hit the capitol building first because we knew it'd be open early; turns out the Austin capitol is bigger than the nation's capitol building in D.C. As they all say there, everything in Texas is bigger and better!

After seeing the capitol and driving through the UT campus a little bit, we spent the rest of the day on South Congress, which is the big shopping street in Austin. There were some great boutiques there, and we made sure to stop into Allen's, the premier place for Cowboy boots...although they were not exactly in our price range, the college students that we are, we loved picking out the knee high leopard prints or the $700 utility boots to try on.
Possibly the best part of our day: REAL MEXICAN FOOD!! We both got a chicken fajita taco and an ahi tuna taco...so amazing. Best part about it was that it was sold out of a roadside stand--apparently, the new thing is to sell things out of airstream trailers. We saw everything from Mexican food to cupcakes, BBQ to puppy adoptions!
Overall we had an amazing time. Good food and family (or so it feels..)--what could be better!?