On Saturday morning, the girls and I headed a few blocks down the street for a new adventure.  Actually, the adventure was trying to get all of us dressed and out the door, ready to walk, by 10:45 a.m.  Yeah, I know, we're out the door way earlier than that during the week and on Sundays, too, but something about Saturday puts us in some kind of time warp where we're completely unable to do anything on any kind of schedule.  But, I tried hard because I really wanted to take the girls to the Pirates of Lost Treasure Mardi Gras Flotilla.  Yeah, I know that's a mouthful.  Basically it's a Mardi Gras parades on boats.  And, I'd been telling the girls about it for several days so my name would have been total mud if I'd made us late.  So, we loaded Abigail up in the hot pink stroller and walked down to the boat landing. 




I thought the parade was supposed to start at 11:15.  We got there around 11:05 which I thought would give us plenty of time to see all the boats in the parade.  I'm not sure what I was expecting....some kind of Boston-like regatta or maybe the World Cup?  As we walked up, there were four boats and they were all heading away from us.    I was a bit disappointed but the girls didn't seem to mind at all.



They played on the shore and the dock and it wasn't long before Abigail had removed her socks and her shoes and Gracie had pulled off her jacket. There was a small crowd still hanging around, so I figured that the four boats that we saw earlier would be headed back our direction. I thought maybe the girls could each catch a strand of beads and we could call it a day.  After about fifteen minutes a big boat came by with tons and tons of beads and a bucketful of Moon Pies.  The girls were standing on the shore with some other people all waving.  The man on the boat threw some beads and they all landed in the water, well off shore, far from the reach of the kids.  Now, the man probably didn't possess the strength of Popeye, but he probably wasn't any kind of Wimpy either.  He had a lot working against him - a strong current, a pretty heavy wind, and the fact that since it was a big boat and couldn't get too close to shore without running the risk of grounding all made getting the booty to shore a Herculean task.  The people who were standing on the dock faired better - they were a good ten feet farther out and were standing higher up so it was easier for the beads and pies to reach them.  I told the girls that we needed to head to the dock for the next boats.  So, we went up there and waited a few minutes...no more boats came.  I started to think maybe no more were coming.  Again, the girls didn't really seem to care.  They had fun running up and down the stretch of beach and jumping off the dock.  Gracie even tried to build a little sand castle.  I think they were just glad to be out in the fresh air!









Don't you love my girls' fashion sense?  Who says you can't mix mutiple patterns.  Look, we've got stripes, diamonds, polka dots, more stripes, and even more stripes.  Gotta love 'em!







And this is my favorite picture of the day....proof that they do love each other (even if they won't always admit it)


A few minutes after I took that picture, the boats started coming back.  And they came back in force.  Evidently, we'd missed more than half of them at the beginning of the parade.  The girls were tickled.  The first boat that came by left us beadless.  Let me tell you something about myself...I stink at catching Mardi Gras beads....for some reason, I always put up my hands to protect myself and my eyes and end up missing out on the catching action.  Luckily, there was a couple next to us who realized that my catching skills were lacking and they came to the rescue.  Every time they caught beads, they handed them to the girls.  Then, more and more people did the same.  It was so much fun to see how excited the girls were!

And, the boats were awesome!










After the last boat passed, we said our thank yous to all the kind people who shared their beads.  The girls were so loaded down they could barely walk





I asked Gracie if she wanted to go back next year and she said, "Absolutely!"  I agree!