Tour de Louisiane

Sorry it's been almost a week since I've posted.  It was a busy week, and I've also been fighting the crud, so blogging hasn't been a huge priority.  Here I am trying to manage one more post before the months is over!

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Last weekend was actually really fun.  Between Thursday and Sunday, I traveled to almost every corner of the state, and was able to enjoy time with family, friends, and coworkers along the way.  It was really relaxing and quite refreshing.

I completed my third (of 3) new agent trainings, which means I "graduated" from the program and I suppose I'm technically not a "new" agent anymore.  Of the 24 people who attended this training, 12 of us were on our last rotation, which means the group is going to be smaller without our "class."  It was actually a really fun training with lots of hands-on activities, which gave me several new ideas for working with youth.  It will be fun to implement some of the new ideas.

101 ways to teach a lesson using paper airplanes.

After my overnight stay in Pollock (Alexandria area), I headed home on Friday night to visit my family.  Daddy cooked some delicious Sammy's steaks, and Nanna came over to visit too.  It was certainly a short visit, but a sweet one.  I squeezed in a haircut in Lafayette on my way out of town, so now I'm sporting a new "do," too.

I made my way down to Thibodaux on Saturday, where I met Alex for the last few innings of their baseball game versus some team from the midwest (it's not important so I don't remember).  I SO enjoyed driving through campus at my alma mater (Nicholls State) for the first time in over two years.  We made a pitt stop at Rouses on our way to Luling for the night, and ended up buying seven (yes SEVEN) king cakes.  Okay, so four of them were for an upcoming meeting (per request of the coordinator), one was for a coworker, one for us, and one for Alex's parents.  Still, seven king cakes.  Mmmm.

As the weekend trend went, our overnight stay with my college roommate and her husband/toddler, was short but fun.  She's pregnant again (high risk), so when our tentative plans to check out a Mardi Gras parade fell through, we were perfectly content to spend the evening eating in and watching 90s Nickelodeon shows via Amazon Prime.  Any time with friends is time well spent.  :)

Sunday's afternoon back in Thibodaux was (thankfully) cut short due to a rain out of their noon game.  With a 4.5 hour drive back to Monroe ahead of us, we certainly appreciated the opportunity to get on the road threeish hours earlier than anticipated. Heck, we even made it home early enough to go grocery shopping on the way and didn't feel totally exhausted by the time we arrived.

My little "tour" added a total of more than 650 miles on the CajunYota, and included visits to almost every major city in the state (Monroe, Alexandria, Lafayette, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge).  Only the Northwest and extreme Southwest corners (Shreveport and Lake Charles, respectively) were left out.  Even after living in five other states over the course of five years, I'm still just as much in love with my home state as I ever was.  There really is no other place like it.

And in case you didn't know, Mardi Gras is only four days away...so go find yourself a king cake and INDULGE!

Happy Weekend!
-Lauren