The Weekend: Grandparents, Catfish, and Parades, Oh My!

My parents came over this weekend (well, technically, they came over on Thursday) for Grandparents' Day at Amelia's school on Friday. We were excited to have them visit -- Amelia loves her Nana and Paw-Paw and couldn't wait for them to see her school and meet her teacher.

 

I didn't actually get to attend the Grandparents' Day festivities (as I am not a grandparent), but apparently some songs were sung, some crafts were given as gifts, and a good time was had by all.

Saturday, we all went to "the swamp" to have thin fried catfish at Middendorf's.  We hadn't been there since Darryl and I lived in Baton Rouge about twelve years ago, but the catfish were just as good as I had remembered. (I'm not a huge catfish fan -- I'll eat them but they aren't necessarily my fav -- but I really love these paper-thin fried ones. Because let's be honest...it's all about the "fried" part.)

On our way back, we stopped at Cabela's, and Amelia wanted me to take a photo of her with this "pirate skeleton" in the aquarium.

Later that afternoon, Darryl and I made a quick trip to a nearby store to get not one, not two, but THREE King Cakes. (One of them, though, was for my parents to take to Darryl's brother and sister. They live in the same town as my parents, and the brother and sister live across the street from each other...just in case anyone was wondering about the logistics of the King Cake sharing.)

And because my gluttony is often followed by immense guilt and feelings of "I really need to eat better," our cart looked like this.

(Also, for any of you outside the state of Louisiana...if you have not had a legit Louisiana King Cake, do NOT judge this dessert by the the dried out fakes that you find in chain stores across the country. They are NOT the same.)

That night (we are now at Saturday night, if you haven't fallen asleep from this riveting blog post), my parents offered to keep Amelia so we could go out, so we met our friends Damian and Rebecca and had a nice meal at Little Village, a restaurant Darryl and I had never been to. The food was pretty good, but our waiter...bless his heart. Darryl said he had "waiter dyslexia" because he got our orders backwards every single time.

(No offense to any of you who have the "real deal" dyslexia.)

Sunday morning, my parents left, and we decided to get out for a bit and try a couple of parades our next-door neighbors suggested in the big city of Thibodaux.

There is no way I can describe the amount of crap loot Amelia acquired from these parades -- beads, moon pies, stuffed animals, swords, more beads, more toys. INSANITY.  Amelia even has the proper parade pose down:

It was a good weekend. And now I am enjoying my favorite Mardi Gras tradition of all: the Mardi Gras Holiday. It's even better than the King Cake.