Spring Break: Babies Gone Wild!

It's Spring Break, so we're ROAD TRIPPIN', baby! Usually when we do our marathon, cross-country drives, we just pull over when we get tired and end up in sort of sketchy motels with moldy carpeting and lingering cigarette smoke in the air. This time, I put my foot down. If we were going to save money by not buying three airline tickets, I rationalized that we could afford one night in a nicer abode AND we could invest in a portable DVD player. And I have ZERO buyer's remorse on both counts. Frank and I drove through about six hours of torrential rains the day we left Texas, but Sophie barely noticed because she was falling in love with Winnie the Pooh. When we reached New Orleans, we headed straight to the Garden District to stay at a B&B: The Chimes. I highly recommend it to anyone traveling to the Big Easy -- gorgeous courtyards, beautiful rooms, a super-friendly host, warm bakery goods in the morning, AND...drumroll please...Amy Tan stayed there once. That's as good as it gets for two nerdy English teachers!

Before we left N'awlins, we toured the French Quarter and stopped off at the aquarium. Sophie was afraid to pet the stingray (which were really friendly and flappy and slippery), but she plunged both arms into the tank when it was her turn to pet a baby shark. I really must show her the movie Jaws sometime soon. She was also thrilled by the jellyfish and the big white alligator. Frank and I both liked the seadragons the best.

Apparently it was field trip day for New Orleans' schools. The ticket guy told us that over 2,000 school kids were also touring the aquarium, but it really wasn't that crazy inside. The five-year-old's didn't have a very long attention span, so they raced through the aquarium and were out of the way before we knew it. Sophie LOVED seeing all the kids, and her favorite part of the aquarium was doing a stomp dance with four other little girls. When we left, we let her run off some energy before loading her back into the car for the last five hour leg of our journey. Hmmm...one of these kids is doin' their own thing...

And...FINALLY...after about 14 hours of driving, we reached our final destination: Uncle Wob and Aunt La-la's house in Al-a-baaaaammmmmaaaa. (Okay, this started off as an Obama chant, but it easily translated to our Montgummy mantra.) We've been looking forward to the arrival of Baby Bennett for so long, and Sophie is already a great cousin. Here she is, poking out the baby's eyeballs. Ah, family.

We have TONS of pics from our trip so far...I'll post again when we return home! We miss all you Texas folks. See ya soon!