It's been a while

I know...my mom mentioned the fact that I haven't updated my blog in quite some time a while back. Now seems like a good time. There are boxes all over our living room, and many of them are full or half-full of my belongings. Others are empty, waiting for me to finish procrastinating and begin the extremely long game of Tetris that is packing for a cross country move. So here I am, uploading pictures and reminiscing.

I hate to say how long ago, I went to St. Louis to visit Cynthia and the three cutest boys on the planet! The boys (and their parents) were troopers, and took me to stand in this extremely long line for Pappy's BBQ. While I don't know if I can say it was worth the wait (we found out when we got to the front that we could have called in a take-out order), I will most certainly request more food from Pappy's the next time I'm in St. Louis.

And, just so you can see how cute they are, here's a picture of me with the boys at the St. Louis temple.

 For Memorial Day, I convinced my friend Alyssa to take a road trip to Louisiana with me. I've been itching to see a gator in the wild for quite some time. There was a Zydeco and Okra festival, and that was all the excuse we needed. The festival was our first stop-we had our faces painted, worried that the Ferris wheel was going to detach from its base and roll away, ate some sort of okra pie, and listened to live Zyedco.

I thought it was quite fantastic-there were people dancing in the street, and it wasn't long before I joined them!

When we'd had enough of the festival, we drove out to Lake Fausse to look for wild life. While we didn't see a gator there, we saw lots of dragon flies,

 

several snakes,

and ARMADILLOS!!

I've been looking to see a live armadillo just about since I moved to Texas-I've seen lots of them as roadkill, and had seen two prior to this trip, but these guys were out in the daylight, digging for grubs and being awfully cute. I thought about trying to catch one, but then thought of what my mother's reaction would be when I had to tell her I caught leprosy, and decided against it. 

 

We ate that night at Randol's, per my friend Nick's suggestion. I loved my boudin and gumbo, and loved even more that there was a live Zydeco band and more dancing at the eatery!

Sunday morning we went to church. Several people suggested we look for gators at the UL campus, so we headed there. I snapped what is one of my favorite pictures there.

  

Then we drove to Baton Rouge to see the temple, and a sister missionary from Australia :)

Monday morning we had a swamp boat tour scheduled. On our way to the dock, we spotted some birds and stopped for a look because we were early. I waited patiently to snap this picture of the spoonbill...there were several chicks in the nest.

Our tour started with lots of waterlilies.

We saw a couple of small gators before eventually finding this 10 foot giant! While learning about the swamp ecosystem and wildlife, we found a giant water moccasin.

 It was a really great trip, and now that I'm leaving Texas, I'm glad that I took the opportunity when it was around.

Camping

Camping, with hammocks. Stayed dry and warm, and were rocked to sleep by a Texas breeze!

Too bad all the mountain cedar in the area made me pay for the time I spent outside. It's like a cruel joke. Most of the time, Texas is so hot and humid that one doesn't want to spend much time out doors, unless there is water near by. When the cooler weather comes, it brings allergy season, and even a heavily medicated individual gets sick just by enjoying weather perfect for things like this!