Falcons Voodoo No Help for Who Dat?

I've never been one to watch football, at least on T.V. I like watching high school football games in person, but mainly because of the social opportunities and listening to the band. T.V. football usually bores me. The crowd noise and announcers make me sleepy and want to take a nap, especially on Sunday afternoon games. However, today was a very different story. The Saints were playing the Falcons here, so of course, since I talked so much "smack" on Friday and my car was attacked by "evil" Saints fans at school, my students included, I had to watch the game today! Wow! What a game! The Falcons won by a field goal in overtime! You could ask Stephen, I was making comments and yelling at the T.V. just like a real fan. So funny! It was a really really good game. Both teams really put up a good fight, and the game went back and forth all afternoon. My favorite commerical right now is for NFL Sunday Ticket from Directv. It shows an old man making a voodoo doll with a red Falcons jersey of his next door neighbor, a Falcons fan living in New Orleans who has the audacity to watch Falcons games on NFL Sunday Ticket. Today's game just just shows that it doesn't matter how much "voodoo" the Saints fans have to offer, the Falcons will put up a fight. It wasn't easy, but it sure is nice to have a "W" for the Dirty Birds since it's not always easy being a Falcons fan in the Who Dat? Nation. :)

Pranks and Polish

A couple of funny stories of life here in New Orleans. Sunday, I was attempting to paint my toes before church, but the open bottle of hot pink polish flew out of my hands. I attempted to catch the bottle, but it only bounced off my hands and all around the bathroom. There was nail polish EVERYWHERE!! All over the tub, toilet, floor, sink, mirror, AND allllll over my brand new shower curtain that we bought right before we moved. Soooo sad! Nail polish remover got it off of everything except the shower curtain. I went to Target to find the same one, but of course they were out, so I just got a new one that was on sale. Still cute, but sad that I had to buy a completely new shower curtain so soon.

Today was a busy day at school. We had a character quality presentation at chapel, picture day, morning tests, AND Johnny Appleseed Day activities. Whew! What a day! We read apple books, tasted apple danishes, chips, juice, and different apple slices. We then graphed our favorite type. Then we read a lot of apple books. My room mom was subbing today for one of our assistants, so she took my kids outside for recess. Or so I thought! While the kids were on the playground she was "up to no good" planning a prank! To give you some background, I have been talking "smack" all week about how the Falcons are going to beat the Saints on Sunday. Today, I wore my Falcons t-shirt proudly! Well...that didn't go over very well in the Saints Nation. After it was almost time for my kids to come in from recess, I got a call over the intercom. She said, "Crystal, your window's down a little and it's about to rain. Come put it up!" So, of course, I believed her because as most of you know, my back window has been broken since before we left for New Orleans. We have it propped up, but it does fall down sometimes. So I went running out the door to put up my window only to be caught by my room mom with her camera snapping pictures of me coming out the door. Then I looked at my car and realized what was going on. There, allllll over my car, were yellow papers that said Geaux Saints, fry the "chickens"! There were even pages in my car that she was able to put in through the crack in my window! Then to make matters worse, my kids were standing by my car singing to "Who Dat" chant that goes like this: "Who dat say they gonna beat dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?" Too funny! It's all in good fun. And we'll see who "dat" is that's gonna beat "dem" Saints on Sunday! :)

Two Dat

It's hard to believe, but we've actually been in New Orleans for TWO months! Wow how the time flies! It's already halfway through September and will be Christmas before we know it (Wal-Mart already says that it is haha)! In two months, we've made a lot of progress. I would say that we are pretty much settled now. We can get around a lot of the city now WITHOUT the GPS. This may seem like an unimpressive feat, but if you've spent more than 5 minutes driving through this city, you know that getting lost, like eating beignets, is part of the New Orleans experience. We still keep the GPS in the car because there is still a lot to learn about navigating this city.


We've started branching out more and trying a lot of the restaurants every weekend. A lot are special occasion style places and are out of our price range, but we have found several affordable yummy places. One of those places is the Creole Creamery, which is quickly becoming our favorite ice cream parlor. We have always enjoyed our ice cream, so this was a real find. Stephen likes the milkshakes and I like the cookie monster or red velvet ice cream. We have tried several "regular" restaurants, too. Our favorites so far are Churro's (a Cuban restaurant), Deanie's (seafood), and The Louisiana Purchase Kitchen (a cajun buffet, perfect for after church). Hopefully when we come home for Thanksgiving we won't be 300 pounds. Thank goodness for my Ladies Power Hour workout class twice a week!

I've been thinking about the past two months and decided to compile a Top 10 list of the things we've learned so far:
10. The locals here sound like they're from New York. Weird.
9. The locals here drive like cab drivers from New York. Scary. Being an aggressive driver who loves to honk the horn is a must.
8. Canal Blvd. and Canal St. are two VERY different streets. This made getting to church one morning very interesting.
7. It's VERY easy to end up driving on the wrong side of the road. The medians and lanes are not always very clearly marked.
6. Saints fans are very committed fans. They definitely don't like Falcons fans. And they sure do love their black and gold--even on their vehicles.
5. GPS devices do not know how to navigate New Orleans. Is it a bad sign when your GPS voice says, "Good luck. You're on your own"?
4. The waistband of your pants shrink when you live here. It couldn't POSSIBLY be all the yummy food we're eating.
3. There are two seasons here: hot and not so hot. Boy am I going to miss fall! :(
2. There seems to be something is the water. There are families with babies EVERYWHERE! Don't worry, we have a Brita filter! :)
1. In the words of the president of NOBTS, Dr. Kelley, "No one ever moves to New Orleans and says, Wow. This is just like home."

There's just no place like home!

Friends and Queens

Jim and Leslie came to visit us for Labor Day weekend and a gay time was had by all haha! I am very glad that they wanted to come see New Orleans and all it has to offer, but I was sad to inform them that their visit fell right in the middle of New Orleans' own "Southern Decadence Festival," the annual gay pride festival. Oh my what a sight to behold! We still had a very good time, but we definitely saw some interesting sights when visiting the French Quarter, more so than usual anyway. New Orleans is something else on an ordinary day so "Southern Decadence" just made it all the more unusual! We had a good time anyway seeing all the fun sights and eating beignets at Cafe du Monde. Yum!
On Saturday we went to The Camilla Grill, a yummy diner downtown. It has the most delicious chocolate milkshake. After that, we headed downtown via the streetcar to save money on parking. It was lots of fun riding the trolley. Neither Stephen nor I had ever riden a streetcar before. Bumpy ride, but lots of fun! We ate at Deanies Saturday night for some delicious seafood. Sunday we all went to church together at First Baptist then later got some ice cream at the Creole Creamery...super yummy!! They have this ice cream there called the Cookie Monster that was right up my alley!
Sunday night we wanted to go on a "ghost tour," but didn't want to pay the $20 per person or walk the French Quarter for two hours so we went to Barnes and Noble, bought a history of New Orleans book, and found a lot of old houses in the Garden District that were supposedly haunted. It was fun getting to look at the outside of the houses without having to even get out of the car. My kind of "ghost hunting"!
We had a great time catching up and experiencing New Orleans with old friends. Super weekend overall!
I was going to post pics, but our laptop died so we had to get a new one. For some reason, our new laptop is blocking the window that should popup to allow me to upload pics. Any suggestions?? Otherwise, see my facebook account for pics!