New Orleans

I've taken all week to get around to this. We did go to New Orleans last weekend and had a great time. We toured St. Louis #3 cemetery, Besthoff Sculpture Garden, Jackson Square, the French Quarter, and Riverwalk.

Billy at the entrance to the St. Louis Cemetery #3.

It was actually very pretty for a cemetery. Lots of crosses and angels everywhere too.

The entrance to the sculpture garden.

Billy being silly. lol. He's pretending to as for directions. So silly. :)

This was my favorite sculpture. It was a huge spider.

This is the entrance to Riverwalk. It's a shopping mall right on the water. I thought it was neat.

This is the statue of Andrew Jackson in the middle of Jackson Square.

St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square

This was one of the first churches built in Louisiana. It's well over 200 yrs. old.

Ok, so I obviously started this several days ago. All I had left to do was put a little text under each picture and it would have been ready. I am so bad at putting things off. But hey, I've been busy. I do have all of my pictures posted on my Shutterfly account, so if you want to see them, just click on the link to the right.

Now I think I will get started on my post from this past weekend, as this is actually from the weekend before, May 20-31.

15th Anniversary Trip to Vegas

15th Anniversary trip to Vegas

Billy and I had a great trip to Las Vegas for our anniversary. We didn't rent a car this time, so we just stayed downtown. We've done all the Vegas Strip stuff we care to do for now and just wanted this time to be simple. We walked around a lot and went to see some movies. We ate at some nice restaurants with really good food. We just had a really pleasant time there. We spent good, quality time together. I love going to Vegas. It kind of funny too, because I don't really drink much, I don't gamble, and I'm not into partying or the strip club thing. So, you might wonder why the heck I like it there so much. I don't really know why. I guess I just like the busyness of it all. I like to just look around and watch the people. I like to see the sites normally even though this time we didn't really go anywhere. I kinda like all of the chaos. I do enjoy going to the shows too. The relatively clean ones that is. :) It was definitely a shoe string budget trip. We should have planned better knowing that it was our 15th anniversary, but no matter, we still had a great time. I can't wait to go back.

We did see 3 movies while we were there. My favorite by far was the Last House on the Left. I love violent, get the bad guys kind of movies though. So if you're into that kind of movie, this is the one for you. I will probably buy that one when it comes out. We also saw Watchmen. I hated it. It was slightly pornographic if you ask me. I don't recommend it at all. It was one of those that you just keep watching and waiting for it to get better, but it never does. Although, I probably would have enjoyed it much more if the blue man wasn't walking around with his junk flopping everywhere. Keep your pants ON blue man. It was just disturbing to me. I mean really, people take their kids to see movies like this thinking it is based on comics. Just disturbing I tell you. I can't even remember the other one we saw, so it must not have made that big of an impression.

The restaurant we ate at for our anniversary dinner was absolutely delicious. It cost a pretty penny. Dinner for 2, $175. But it was totally worth it. The atmosphere was great, the service was great, and the food was exquisite. Yum, yum. I will totally go there again for a special occasion.

We found a cheap little diner in Binions. That is where they started the whole 'on t.v.' poker tournaments. Anyway, the food there was really good too. And they have a dessert called the banana royal. It was huge. One time Billy and I got our own, but always shared after that. It had a big brownie on the bottom surrounded by banana slices, covered in vanilla ice cream, whip cream, nuts and 2 cherries. For only $5 it was a great afternoon snack or after dinner dessert to share. I am a total ice cream junkie, plus I am quite fond of all the other ingredients as well, so it was right up my ally. I'm not the size I am for no reason. lol. I do like the food a little bit too much y'all.

We also saw a show. We saw the Rat Pack. It was a pretty good show, and since we showed our room key, we got tickets for only $8 each. The show wasn't at the hotel where we stayed, but at the casino/hotel across the street which owns both properties. The show lasted about an hour and a half, so it was totally worth the price. We both really enjoyed it.

One day while we were there, there was a Knight Rider convention or something going on. There were Kit cars all up and down Freemont street. It was kinda cool to see them. There were a few other kinds of cars there as well, like the DeLorian from Back to the Future. Billy took all kinds of pictures of the inside of that car. He loves that movie, the first one anyway.

We didn't really take a whole ton of pictures this time. I guess that's because we've been there so many times and have a ton of Vegas pictures already. But we had a fabulous time, and I look forward to going back again as I always do. :)

And in case you don't know, click on the picture at the top to see all of the pictures we took. Enjoy:)

Our trip to Japan

Ok, I said I'd post a few pics from Japan. We may not get to go in March as we had hoped, but we will definitely go this year sometime. Troy isn't sure he'll be there at the time we want to visit. And of course, it would be nice to see my brother. We will know when it gets a little closer.

Mine and Billy's 15th anniversary is in March, so this trip would pretty much be for that. However, if we don't go to Japan at that time, we will go somewhere. Probably Vegas again. I love it out there, which is funny for someone who does absolutely no gambling to say. I guess I just like all the pretty lights. lol. I don't really know what it is about the place, but I do like it. It is called sin city for a reason though, so ya gotta watch it. :) However, we do behave ourselves. No worries there. I am far from a wild child and Billy is even farther from it than I.

Ok, I'll shut up about the possibility of Vegas for now and get to the pics from Japan.

This is the kids when we went on a hike, of sorts, to the big buddha. We weren't planning on going to see the buddha, but since we got off the train in the wrong place and couldn't figure out how to get to where we wanted to go, we just went to see the buddha instead. It was kinda cool. In a people actually worship such a thing and what a shame kind of way. This, obviously, is the five of us in front of the buddha. We went up inside of it too. It was quite large. I guess that's why they call it "big".

These are said to be the buddha's sandals. They too were quite large. (Sorry the picture is so blurry. My camera doesn't know how to behave for me. lol.)

And of course, this is a picture of the kids with their Uncle Troy. This was taken at a garden area behind the buddha.This is a restaurant Troy and Brynn took us to where you cook your own meat and eat it with sticky rice. It was delicious and a lot of fun. The kids really enjoyed it. They are holding their chop sticks. Karen was the only one who ended up having to use a fork. But she did try the chop sticks. She would have left hungry if we hadn't gotten her a fork though.
Here we are in the world's largest Chinatown outside of China. It was great here. I definitely want to go back here whenever we do go back. We had a lot of neat foods to eat, and the shopping was great. Wish I could have done more shopping. :)Still in Chinatown here. It was very crowded, but so much fun. It was pretty cold though.

Brynn with some of the food we had to eat in Chinatown. Not sure what's up with the silly face she's making. lol. She likes to be goofy though. :)

Karen and me on the train in Japan. She just looks so happy. :) We took the train a lot. It was fun.
Just out and about in Japan. We had been at a mall. Again, we loved it here. I can't wait to go back! I can understand why Troy and Brynn love it here so much. It is a great place. I hope whenever we do go back, we will be able to fit a lot more into our trip. Of course, we won't have the kids with us when we go next, so we should be able to do much more.

And business class on the 777 on the way home is definitely the way to go. :) Again, I was meant to be rich. lol. And Hunter was surprised to see that he wasn't gonna have to eat out of a snack pack type tray for any of his meals this time. The ice cream sundae was just icing on the cake for this boy. However, Billy and Karen were back in coach due to Karen's age at the time. They not only ate out of small troughs, but did so right by the constantly used lavatories for the 300 passengers in coach. The smell of urine at 42,000 ft. made the meal just right. He was in the lap of luxury. I guess business class was just ok compared to that. lol.

Our trip to Orlando last fall and more pictures of the resort.

Orange Lake Resort

These are the pictures I was trying to put on here yesterday, but things were just not working out for me. Billy, last night, finally got the one picture to post. If you click on the picture, you can see all of the ones we took while we were in Orlando. We did love the resort and of course, ended up buying a time share there. Something we said we would NEVER do. But it does seem more practical now since we can travel anywhere. We do plan to go there again in the fall for the kids break. We were going to go on a Disney cruise but cancelled that. Billy was very bummed about that, but I think we will have just as much fun in Orlando for that week. I know I am looking forward to it. Everytime I look at the pictures of the pools, I wanna go back. Fall is an excellent time to go there too. It's not too hot, and it's not too cold. It's just right. I do highly recommend the Disney cruise though. But for the time being, it will save us over $3000. So, it just seemed more practical for now. And hey, maybe Hunter will actually get his braces with the tax refund instead of us spending it all on the cruise. LOL. I guess it does take sacrifice to be a good parent. :) I hope to sometime in the next year or two, use the time share in another country though. That was the allure for me anyway. But the Orange Lake Resort is awesome, adn we can't wait to go back. The lucky thing for us too is that we can just fly down for the day if we want and spend it there, then come home that night. We haven't done that yet, but I look for us to do it in the spring sometime.

Orange Lake Resorts

Our resort.

Carnival Fantasy Cruise we took with W.C. and Leslie in December 2008

These are some of the pictures we took in December when Billy and I went on the Carnival Fantasy with W.C. and Leslie. We had a fantastic time. I just thought I'd share them. Cruising is so much fun. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our Disney cruise that we had planned for this coming September. We thought about it long and hard and decided it would be the best thing to do for now. I do believe we will be able to take the kids again in a few years. But we do have a time share in Orlando, so we are just going to do that instead. It will save us around $3000. I think we'll have just as much fun doing that. We went down there last September for a week and had a great time. Looks like with all that savings, we can actually get Hunter's braces. LOL.