Mawdee Graw

Preface: I feel kind of silly posting this entry, because I think that most if not all of our readers were actually a part of this fun-filled experience.

WE DID IT! The chicks and four super tight friends ventured east to Cajun Country this past weekend - and, boy, was it an adventure. We spent two lovely days with the incredible Borne family who were gracious enough to teach us a little bit about what they call Mardi Gras.

Five of our Ten were lucky enough to attend one of Lafayette's Mardi Gras parades on Friday night, while the other five were unfortunately stuck in (what was called "the road trip from hell") terrible traffic. The parade was outta control!! Despite Claire's abounding experience in the area of bead catching, Mikey and D.O.'s dashing good-looks and my disasterous attempts, Sarah managed to stomp us all in the game of "who can catch the most beads". (Just remember, Sarah, that the first shall be last!)


Saturday morning, after Keith made us some homemade biegnets, we continued with our Fat Tuesday fun! We drove two hours south west of Lafayette to, you guessed it, New Orleans, LOUISIANA. (We did take a moment to recognize the city to which Claire's favorite song is dedicated---"Callin' BATON ROUGE".) It was crazy to see the party amidst the still prevelant devastation of hurricane Katrina. But, we all know that those crazy cajuns would never let the party stop for one silly storm. The culture was as alive as ever! Our attempts at catching a couple parades and beads were thwarted by the rain, however, Stephanie managed to somehow beat us all by obtaining the most beads.


We left the parade route and followed Keith for over an hour around the french quarter area. [NOTE: Keith, we were not bitter about the hour spent in the car...it just needed to be mentioned. We actually loved getting to know each other that much more!] We finally arrived at my favorite place of the--Pat O'Brian's Piano Bar. We were fortunate enough to be seated right next to the pianos and were saranated with the Aggie War Hymn for all to hear. Judging by the way everyone in the place told us goodbye when we left, I'm pretty sure we made a lasting impression on all present. We finished out the day with a stop at the famous Uncle Leon and Aunt Ro's where they fed us our appetizer of chicken and sausage gumbo. Man was it good!!! We arrived back in Lafayette where Miss Renee's outstanding homemade lasagna awaited us.

A fabulous weekend was had by all and all are very grateful to the Borne's for giving us a taste of the Cajun culture (as if Claire is not enough!).

Unbelievable.

Next Year?? Same time? Same place? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

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