Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya

If you've been hanging around here for very long, you've probably figured out by now that I am super passionate about my Cajun heritage and really enjoy sharing it with others.  While it's fun to remember those weekends out on "The Island" with my family and friends growing up, some of my fondest memories are of the opportunities I've had to share my culture with friends from far away.

Benjamin from Ohio was the first person to get the full Cajun experience, and then Lendy from North Carolina followed suit a few years later.  One of these days, I'm going to get around to sharing the story of Alex's first visit to Cajun country, when we wrangled an alligator and everyone thought Swamp People was fa-real because of it.  But in all seriousness, people were so hospitable to me when I lived out-of-state, that I have always wanted to return the favor.  And even my local friends, enjoy getting in on the fun.

So, while you might be bored of reading about all our visits to the marsh, I can't resist sharing the latest one in which Alex invited his coworker from Michigan to see what Cajunland is all about!

Cam is a fisherman at heart, so when we decided to spend July 4th weekend at home, I knew it was the perfect time to invite him along. He jumped at the chance, and enthusiastically joined us on the 3.5 hour trip south.  The guys spent all of Friday out on the water - first fishing, then running crab cages for our "big" Independence Day meal.

Cam thought he was in a real life episode of Swamp People when he caught this TREE SHAKA!

Except it was really just a tree.

But he did get to see real-life Liz and Justin's foot truck (trailer?) down in Pecan Island, even if they weren't open at the time.

Friday night, our awesome friends, Victoria and Seth, hosted us for Seth's famous homemade wings, complete with real BWW wing sauce and home-brewed beer.  Tori and I spent the evening taking all things babies (their 2.5 year old was born 19 days before our wedding, and they're expecting #2 in September), while they boys drank beer and watched YouTube videos.  Shenanigans I tell you.

On Saturday, the boys cooked up their loot and my friends/former-coworker from Arkansas came over to help us enjoy it.  The neighbors even contributed their own performance of evening fireworks to top off the night.

I really enjoy having people around.  This photo makes my heart both happy and sad, wishing we had more friends in our town.

 

Don't tell me you're not jealous you missed out on those huge, deliciously awesome boiled crabs!

And of course, we couldn't leave town without the traditional "Sunday dinner" at Nanna's house.  :)

Otherwise, that's a wrap, folks!  Hope your Fourth was just as awesome as ours!

-Lauren

Callin' Baton Rouge

Even though we had just spent the weekend in South Louisiana visiting my family, on a whim we decided to do it again the following one too (June 1st).  LSU was named as a host site for the first round of NCAA Baseball Championships, and Alex's alma mater, UNC-Wilmington, was selected as one of the four teams to play in the Baton Rouge regional.  Alex scrambled to snag two tickets (under covering, chair-backs, AWESOME seats!) for all UNCW games, and we peeled out of town early Friday afternoon for what shaped up to be another long weekend in the south.

As luck would have it, my brother held on to his Baton Rouge apartment for a few extra days, so Alex and I borrowed a second air mattress (ours is twin-sized) and camped out on the floor of the apartment for the weekend.  Austin had tickets to all the games through his LSU student ticketing program, which meant he spent the entire weekend at the park and we had quite a bit more wiggle room in our schedule.  Throw in monsoon-like rains, and we were primed for several nights of after-midnight baseball.  It was crazy/exciting/awesome.

Friday night, we ended up killing time with beer, food, and a visit from my friend Dawn at Walk-On's  (rated #1 Sports Bar in America - check it out!) near the stadium.  Our game didn't start until 9:15 p.m., and we were in it for the long haul!

Saturday, we met my birthday twin, Kim (college friend turned internship roommate who now lives in Boise, ID), and her husband and 18 month old daughter for lunch at Mellow Mushroom.  I hadn't seen the Peters Family since our wedding 2.5 years ago, and Alex had never really gotten to know them outside of the very first time he met them (in New Orleans exactly 1 year to the day before we were married).  I also enjoyed meeting little Eliana for the first time.

With rain on the horizon, Alex and I killed more time by walking around the Mall of Louisiana and resisting the urge to shop too hard.  We did come across these adorable Louisiana-themed tees at a little boutique.

This one is my favorite - I used to use the word "envie" in a sentence almost daily. :)

Anyway, baseball.  UNCW played very well.  They beat Tulane 10-1 at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, then lost to LSU 0-2 at 2:15 a.m. the following morning.  Sunday, we were primed for third day of midnight baseball but the NCAA pulled the game an hour before it started and after 10,000 LSU fans had sat through 2 hours of the second UNCW/Tulane game (which UNCW won 8-2).  On Monday, LSU pulled out another 2-0 win against UNCW, which ended our long weekend in the "Red Stick."

No, I didn't color my hair recently...not quite sure where the "goth" look comes from.

I had to be back in Baton Rouge for work on Tuesday/Wednesday, so we decided to drive the hour and a half to my parents' for a night instead of spending 3.5 hours in the car going back to Monroe, and returning again the following day. My daddy and Nanna had just finished peeling 100 pounds of fresh shrimp, so we were able to indulge in a special treat of FRESH fried shrimp for dinner that evening.  It was a lovely treat to be back in Cajun Country, even if for a short time.

...And if you haven't totally fallen in love with Louisiana by now, I might be worried about you.  ;)

-Lauren

If Crabs Weren't Involved

Remember that birthday tribute video I promised you?  Yeah, it's still in the works.  (Really, it is.  We're just really busy at the moment.)  Well, anyway, one of my friends sent a video with a quote that has me dying laughing even when I think about it three months later.  Her words went a little something like this..."Lauren, Lauren.  Would I still be friends with you even if crabs weren't involved?  ...Mmmm... YES!"

Out of context, this statement could raise some eyebrows.  What Victoria is really referring to is the tradition we have of she and her husband coming over to my parents' house to eat boiled crabs (almost) every time Alex and I are in town.  This tradition started something like 10 years ago when she and her now-hubby started dating, and long before Alex as even a twinkle in my heart.

It's not like we set out to make visiting over crab boils a tradition or anything; it's just something my family does.  Lauren's coming to town (remember, I lived out of state for 5 years after college, before returning, and even now I live almost 4 hours from home)?  Oh, well...call everybody, we're having a crab boil!! Really and truly, my daddy is a real-as-it-gets Cajun man and bringing home 12 dozen, fresh beautiful blue crabs after a day in the marsh makes his heart swell with pride.  And so, we eat boiled crabs.

Every once in a while, Daddy Stu gets the chance to show off his skills by taking along a visitor to "help" bring home the proverbial bacon (aka crabs).  Several of my out of state friends have had the opportunity to accompany Daddy Stu into the marsh, and they always come back with some pretty fabulous stories.  Since Alex is a Louisiana transplant, he always jumps at the invitation to visit the marsh, especially when crabs are involved.

On the flip side, while this girl spent many a weekend catching fish and crabs next to her daddy, it's become much less frequent as I've gotten older.  Needless to say, when I decided to join the guys on their excusion a few weeks ago, my presence was long overdue.  But before we headed out, we called up all the extended family and told them to be on "crab watch," for surely a good dinner was in store.

Little did I know, Daddy Stu had lined up a little some extra for our trip that day.  His marsh neighbor friend happened to mention that he'd commissioned a friend of a friend to bring his airboat ride to their camp (think marsh-style weekend getaway home) to give rides for all the kids.    Stu knew this was the perfect opportunity to wheel and deal his way into setting up a little something special for his baby girl.

Believe it or not, in all my 28 years as a Cajun girl, I had never actually ridden in an airboat!  Needless to say, my eyes got big and my heart started pitter-pattering whenever that airboat trailer showed up and Alex leaked the secret letting me know that rides were in store for us!  Daddy Stu was beaming with pride as his special treat fell on happy faces, and he started snapping photos for days.

The ride was pretty cool.  It wasn't as fast or thrilling as it could have been since so many little ones were on board, but I was plenty excited for this first-time opportunity.  We even got the chance to ride donuts on land!!  So fun.

How about those crabs?  Well........ a storm was moving in so we rocked and rolled to get out to the cages and back before things got hairy.  Unfortunately, the water was very rough due to high winds and we had a tough time locating all the cages.  Even worse, our haul only totaled 52 crabs instead of the 144+ we usually score.

Being the Cajun he is, Daddy Stu wasn't satisfied with a measly little 4 dozen crabs.  On the way home, he pulled into a crawfish hut with plans to buy half a sack of medium sized crawfish, but left with a whole sack of large ones instead.  Ohhh Daddy Stu... And many of the extended family didn't even show!

Moral of the story - visit Cajuns and you won't ever worry about going home hungry!

-Lauren

A Ducky Day

For the most part, no matter our field of employment, every once in a while we all get to do something pretty "cool."  In some cases, that might mean traveling somewhere really exotic or meeting someone very influential.  On Saturday, I went on a private tour of the Duck Commander warehouse in West Monroe.  That counts, right?

Last spring, our region hosted a weekend camp for 7th and 8th graders with the "4-H Dynasty" theme.  (Read more about that here.)  At the time, we'd tried to arrange for one of the cast members to make an appearance at our camp, but were told it would be better for us to bring the group to them, instead.  So, we decided to reward some of the teens for their participation in the camp by recognizing two youth from each small group and all the Jr. Counselors with plans for an upcoming tour at the Duck Commander warehouse.

When we tried to follow through with those plans, we kept running into road blocks and red tape.  Remodeling began on the warehouse to make more space for the make-shift gift shop that had been set up, and it was definitely a no-go when filming was in-progress.  Then we were told that A&E had taken over all tour arrangements and these were no longer being scheduled.  Womp, womp.

Fast forward to January 2014, and enter Representative Vance McAllister.  Mr. McAllister visited our District Livestock Show as a local dignitary and FFA Alumn with a history of showing livestock.  One of our agents made a comment to his staff about trying to get into Duck Commander, and just like that, voila! the possibility was reborn.  (As good friends of the family, the Robertsons were key in a last minute push to get McAllister elected.)

Finally, we got a date on the calendar - April 12, 2014.  Then, on April 7th, a media storm hit when videos surfaced of Mr. McAllister in an extramarital affair.  Turns out, the "other woman" was his scheduler, and the very person who got us on the calender for touring Duck Commander.  Rut-roh.  After a few calls and being shifted around (to the DC office), we were reassured the tour would go on.  WHEW!

So, just in the nick of time, we walked right past families with license plates from Minnesota, New Mexico, and Tennessee...right into the back office of Duck Commander.  Oh yes, yes we did.  We saw Willie's (old) office, the duck call room, warehouse space, loading dock...everything.  Well, except Willie's new (actual) office...definitely off limits.  It was the coolest thing ever.

Willie's (old) office.

Warehouse...woop.

Duck call room.

Oh you know...just making a duck call...er, posing in Jase's chair.

They leave fan mail laying out haphazardly.  We may or may not have read a few letters from moms to Martin telling him why he should date their "outdoorsy" daughters.  

Conference room (and kids). 

And to close out the morning, we headed over to the Robertson family restaurant, Duck Diner, for a delicious lunch.  Word to the wise, the Jambalaya plate is as big as your head so be sure to bring a friend.

If you're a fan of the show and decide to make a trip over to West Monroe, be sure to pick up a brochure featuring the Hometown Tour of sites featured on the show.  However, don't expect greatness or anything majestic...

This is Monroe, after all.
-Lauren

Not Your Average Party Gras

I really wish I would have posted this earlier, but I think it's still interesting if not timely.  Carnival season is still on my mind even though it ended a week ago.  When most people think of Mardi Gras, certain images come to mind.

Maybe this,

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or this,

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or this,

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or maybe even this.

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But, I bet few of you would imagine this:

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This little known tradition of celebrating Mardi Gras is one that takes place outside of the tourist-filled crowded cities, in the small community of Church Point, LA.  (Side note:  I actually completed a 5-week French immersion program in this community's sister city of Point-de-l'Eglise, Nova Scotia, in Summer 2004).  The official name for this form of celebration is, "Cajun Courir de Mardi Gras," or "Fat Tuesday Run."  Recently featured by National Geographic, visiting this traditional celebration is definitely on my bucket list.  I hear it's pretty exciting, but sort of difficult to follow since the celebration isn't exactly stationary.  I encourage you to check out the NatGeo article, because the writers did a pretty good job of illustrating the story.  

So, who's in on checking it out with me sometime?  Come on...you know you wanna!

-Lauren

A Very Important Day

I am so excited about today that I don't even know where to start.  No, it's nothing life- or earth-shattering, but March 4, 2014 is a very important day in my world.  Why?  Because... TODAY.IS.MARDI.GRAS.  Duh!

I may not live in south Louisiana at the moment...I may not be attending a parade, yelling "throw me something, mister," or dancing to the beat of jazz music...but by golly this girl is celebrating Mardi Gras, even if it is mostly in her heart and not out with thousands of her closest "friends."

On the other hand, I AM wearing a gold shirt with green and purple scarves intertwined around my neck.  I WILL eat a ginormous slice of king cake after dinner.  And you know what else, I will be remembering happier days of riding in the back of my daddy's boat trailer those years we had our very own family floats down in Pecan Island.  I'll remember the year I experienced my first and only "fancy" parade in New Orleans with an 'honorary Cajun' friend.  And most of all, I'll be daydreaming about how Cajuns are the only cultural group* I have yet to see throw an awesome party.

This time of year always gets me.  Where else do you find an entire state (almost) that shuts down for three+ days...just for the heck of a good time?  I mean, really.  There is no place like it.

Yes, I'm jealous of all those who get the week off (because the weirdos up here in north Louisiana, don't observe such frivolous things...).  You can take the girl out of Cajun Country, but you cannot take Cajun Country out of the girl.  Impossible.

So while all of you are knee deep in the trenches of that icy white stuff (heck, we're pretty damn cold here too), I'm going to sit here and smile about the beauty that is south Louisiana.  ...And maybe try to figure out how I can get "I'm Cajun" stamped on my driver's license before it expires in 8 days.  Because, as of yesterday:

'I'm a Cajun' available on licenses

Sign me, up people!
-Lauren

*Disclaimer:  I'm sure there are other cultural groups that throw some pretty phenomenal celebrations, but for the sake of this post I am going to go ahead and admit some personal bias here.  :)

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!

-

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

Baby It's Cold Outside

Happy February!

In my world that usually means hello Spring, my favorite season of the year.  Yes, I know Spring doesn't technically begin until, what, April?   Like I said before - my world.

Growing up in south Louisiana, there were generally only three seasons:  spring, summer, and fall.  We like to skip over winter, except for maybe those 4-5 weeks college students have off between semesters...or better yet, the two week "Christmas break" K-12 students and teachers are given.

Not this year.  Apparently some cousin of Mother Earth has recently moved to town.  They tell me his name is Old Man Winter.  Ever met him?  Supposedly, he looks something like this:

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He seems a bit scary and very A Wrinkle in Time to me.  I don't think we could be good friends.  Unless maybe snow was involved...

So, snow.  Yeah, Louisiana doesn't really get snow.  Like ever.  The last time there was enough snow at home to build a real snowman was 1988 or 1989 (either way, that was 25 years ago!).

One would think living in north Louisiana might make for a greater likelihood of experiencing that pretty white stuff.  Nope.  Not this year.

Don't get me wrong, it has been COLD here.  Actually, I've probably experienced the coldest temperatures of my life this winter.  And seeing as how I spent an Oct-Dec. and Jan. - May in Idaho and DC, respectively, I think that's kind of a big deal.  Proof:

As cold as it may have been here, the ground was bone dry.  Okay, so we did see flakes for about an hour last Friday (1/24), but nothing really stuck.  If you can believe it, though, all of south Louisiana was shut down for practically the entire week due to massive (by our standards) amounts of sleet/ice and some of the white stuff.  Even the national weather forecasters were impressed:

At one point, 59 of Louisiana's 64 parishes closed their state offices, and it was the same for school districts.  Go back and read that again.  59/64.  That's 92%...NINETY-TWO PERCENT of Louisiana's state offices were closed...CLOSED...for two (!) days!

It wasn't just state offices.  Universities were closed.  (LSU, LSUA, ULL, MSU, NSULA, NSU, SELA, and probably a several others...which is basically every university in the state except LSUS and ULM).  Even more impactful were the road closings:  I-10, I-110, I-49, I-90 and nearly every major bridge or overpass, as well.

If you don't know much about Louisiana, let me tell you - this state IS water.  It's next to impossible to get someplace without crossing a bridge or overpass.  This means the entire state of Louisiana was practically paralyzed for travel and commerce for the greater part of two days.  Seriously.

Whodathunk it?

Now, I know there are places where -45 below has become "normal," or anything above freezing is considered "balmy."  But, this is Louisiana (and the south, for that matter) we're talking about.  In fact, I came across an article a few days ago about how even a hundred years ago, weather data shows the impact of winter weather in the south is far more extensive and long-term than that of the northern states.

Either way, it's easy to question that whole "global warming" thing.

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I hear there's more "winter weather" in the forecast coming up for the third week in a row.  Maybe one of these days north Louisiana will get a taste of the fun stuff.  Ya'll stay warm out there!

-Lauren

P.S.  For the record, though schools in the parishes I live/work in were closed, my office didn't close and I worked every day this week.  My family lives on the coast (well, practically) and they were off on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  I'm just a little bitter...

Holidays, Continued

On December 30th, Alex and I finally made our way back to Louisiana, but not to our house.  After spending the previous night in Mobile, AL on our return from the mountains in North Carolina, we stopped in the Baton Rouge area to have brunch at Dawn's house.  My college roommate, Jen, and her 15 month old, Landon, made the drive from Luling to meet us there.  Hanging out with these ladies (plus Alex and Landon) was just another bright spot on this fabulous two-week trip.  It was super fun to carve out visits with everyone along the way - well worth the efforts.

My family was so kind as to delay "Christmas" until we arrived.  My parents and brother waited to exchange gifts with us, as did my grandmother and aunt/uncle/cousins.  On New Year's Eve, we were finally able to enjoy Nanna's delicious seafood gumbo, and visiting with everyone was definitely an added bonus.  All of us cousins are growing up - most of us have spouses or significant others now and it is just cool to see how we are all growing up these days.

You should totally be jealous.

While we were in town, Alex even got to make good on his promise to Seth for a man-date at Buffalo Wild Wings.  Alex and Seth sat next to each other, while Victoria and I sat across the table, and each gender kept their respective conversations going for over 2 hours.  It was entertain to see how different the conversations were for each of us - boys talk about farts and boobies, where as girls talk about faith and babies.  

This is a terrible picture, really, but it's all I have from our visit with the triplets this time around (obviously Drew is missing from the photo).  We gave the kids their first set of skates as Christmas gifts, then Alex and I, with the help of their mom, spent the next 30 minutes making circles through the living room, kitchen, and dining room, as they tried out their new toys.  It was totally adorable.

Then of course, our big ticket to report was the purchase of a new vehicle.  We put nearly 2500 miles on my Corolla this trip, and the poor girl was so weighted down that her tires may have gone flat if we added a toothpick to the pile.  Between the trunk and back seats, it looked like I was moving across the country again.

  

We didn't plan to make the car purchase until we returned to Monroe, but there was a deal in Lafayette that no one would match and we certainly couldn't pass that up.  It was rainy and gross here for most of the week, though, so Alex has yet to really have the chance to take it out on the road.

2014 Acadia

We were supposed to head back to Monroe yesterday, but my car has been in the shop since Tuesday getting a major maintenance work-over, so we are at the mercy of the dealer.  It looks like we'll be cleared to get on the road a little later today.  Sadly, I won't get to enjoy the inaugural trip in our new ride, but I'll be following closely behind in my like-new little Cajun Yota.

Even the new car is filled to the brim!

I can't wait to get home and settle back in before dragging my butt back to work on Monday.  Ugh.  The thought of work just makes me want to puke.  At least the kitties will be waiting for us, and I am sooo looking forward to cuddling with those cuties.

Hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays and are excited about kicking off this new year.
-Lauren

Update:  We have arrived in Monroe safe and sound.  See below for the final mileage we racked up (in my car only) on this 15-day trip.