Happy Halloween

Everyone have a fun Halloween! Be safe!

Grapes

We winterized our yard this weekend because it's supposed to snow on Wednesday. The sprinkler pipes are dry, the leaves are bagged, and the grass is cut. One more thing to do is harvest the grape. The vines are full of Concord grapes. Danny cut the grapes off the vine and I provided the photo documentary. Hard work!

Garza Ingenuity Strikes Again

Time to winterize the yard. Danny put two covers together to fit the sprinkler system.
I guess double-wides are not available at Home Depot.

It's not official unless duct tape is involved.

It works!

Loki Tony

Trying on hats...

After lunch in the French Market...

Feeding the carriage horse...

In Bar Tonique (drinking vanilla soda!)...

The Protectors

New Orleans is surrounded by statues. All kinds of statues!
These first three are from the cemetery.

This sweet cherub is watching over Larry.

This one stands among rubble.

This one is in the garden of the hotel.

St. Jude...This shrine is at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Our patron saint...St. Louis!
He is in the St. Louis Cathedral.

Voodoo Authentica

Can't visit New Orleans without seeing Voodoo everywhere!

In the doorways...

At the market...

Tony brought this one home...

We visited Priestess Miriam's Voodoo Spiritual Temple.

The Temple is lavishly decorated!

Each 'altar' has so many 'gifts'. It was really interesting to listen to the Priestess.

Cemetery No. 1

This was a tour that took us into a rich history of New Orleans.
When I say 'rich' I mean a colorful and mysterious tour through the beginnings of this town's culture.

This is Madame Marie Laveau's tomb.
She is the queen of voodoo in the bayou!

This row was really creepy, even during the day.

Can you imagine this view from your front porch?

I love this view!

N'awlin's Food

Fried Catfish Po' Boy!

Cheese fries!

Red beans & rice with sausage!

I ate the gumbo bowls too fast to photograph...

Rum Tour

We went to a rum distillery in New Orleans.

The owner is also an artist who lives in Paris half the year...not Paris, Texas, but rather Paris, France.

This is a bunch of molasses. Seriously, rum starts with a vat of molasses.

Rum-a-dum-dum...lots of barrels of rum.

SHOTS!

Post-shots...

The distillery! Kinda scary.

So we continued the 'tasting' on the party balconey!

Hello New Orleans!

Our family's semi-annual traveling summit this year was in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Our hotel is an old Conferate Army hospital and supposedly haunted. The ghost stories just add to an awesome ambiance and feel to our stay in the French Quarter.

This is the front of the hotel. The hotel is made up of several different buildings. It's interesting though that most of the Quarter's building are connected and make up little courtyards.

This is the hotel's courtyard.

Now, here is 'Building 5'. This is the most haunted AND the building inwhich we stayed. We occupied rooms on the 2nd and 4th floors as well as the suite in the attic. Yea...awesomeness!

Our room! The windows are huge! There are no screens, so you can (and, boy did we ever!) walk out the life-sized window to the balcony.

To the left of our balcony is Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville and Coop's.

To the right of our balcony is Jackson Square.

Our first night's dinner to kick off the family summit was at Cafe Amelie. This is where the gumbo tasting marathon began. And, a lot of other fun stuff...

We sat outside the restuarant. This view of the building was from our table.

Street performers are everywhere! Stay tuned...

Chill

"As in life, chill for best results"

I read this on the side of a water bottle yesterday...a couple of times.

The View

Look to the left...

...to the right...

...now, look straight ahead...

These are taken from the end of the driveway at the lodge during my weekend in the mountains. We caught the beginning of the trees changing to Fall colors. Beautiful!