A Deeper Life: Looosiana

I've been gone all weekend in case you've wondered. Gone to Loooosiana with my hubby, looking for a place to live.

I realize it was a really long weekend for you without getting my blog updates. I apologize for leaving you for so many days in a row. Abby withdrawals. It happens to everyone.

I most certainly had Leia withdrawals. I missed that baby doll so much! But her Grandma Kim (Jamie's mom) was nice enough to come all the way to Memphis to stay with her so that we didn't have to board her in some sketchy dog home.

Baby girl missed her mama too:

This is her in mourning, sad that we were going to be gone for 4 days:

Thursday morning, we woke up, packed up the car and headed on our way to Lafayette. It's about a 7 ish hour drive from Memphis to Lafayette. We drive through Mississippi and usually stop in Jackson to go potty and grab a bite to eat.

Since I'm a blogger, I try to document the trip (when I remember). Jamie, unfortunately, is not a huge fan of my means of documenting things. i.e.: pictures. When I whipped out the camera, this is what he did:

Coward.

I tried a few more times, and it didn't work.

I guess being a photographer's daughter, you get used to being in front of the camera like so:

I'm such a ham!

A make-up-less ham, that is. I don't like to wear make-up when traveling. It's uncomfortable.

While Jamie drove, I sat comfortably in the passenger's seat, re-reading The Help. I read it last year and wanted to read it again since I just watched the move. It's just as good the second time:

In fact, I just might take myself on a loser date and go see The Help again since Jamie's out of town this week. Call me lame. I'm okay with it.

On our drive, we crossed over lots of water. I forget what these bodies of water were, but I was just looking for aldergators (as little Leia called them on Jon and Kate Plus 8).

Lots of swampage:

No luck.

When you drive into Lafayette...it's not exactly the prettiest sight:

It appears as ghetto and grungy and old. But once you get past that, it gets nicer and more visually appealing.

Thanks to Jamie's company, they paid for the whole weekend. Car, gas, food, hotel, everything! Thanks, guys!

Nice king size bed:

They even upgraded us to a room with a whirlpool:

The ladies at the front desk said we looked like a "nice cute couple" so they gave us the free upgrade. Don't mind if I do!

Each morning, I spent some time in the Hampton Inn's workout room. It was rather limited and dated. The treadmill worked fine, but it felt like I was around 400 pounds, clunking on that thing! But hey, it worked:

Friday morning, we woke up and hit the ground running, looking for a place to live. Since we don't know how long we're going to live there, we decided on getting an apartment. We only lived in Memphis for a little over a year, and it is a pain in the tookus (and wallet) to buy and sell the same house within a year. Not fun. At all.

We went to three different apartment complexes and one of them was just amazing! It was the most expensive, but it was also the biggest with the most stuff. It's like a city within a city. I probably shouldn't tell you the name via world wide web (for safety purposes), but if you really want to know, send me an e-mail and I'll tell you where we're gonna live because it's A-MA-ZING! We're pretty stoked!

One of my favorite parts about it is the gym. There's a huge cardio room and a separate weight room, along with TONS of classes that come with the membership which is free to residents! Win win!

The third apartment complex was my least favorite. This young girl was our tour guide gal and she was just a little too flirty with Mr. James saying stuff like, "OMG where did you go to school? You look so familiar! Are you an athlete? You look like someone I know? Where are you from? You'll really like it here!" Hush it, you floozy! He's MY man! Anyways...I wasn't a fan of the apartment OR the employees there. Lose lose.

Friday afternoon, we saw My Idiot Brother...wildly inappropriate, but funny. If you like really stupid humor, you'll like this movie.

Saturday was an interesting day. Jamie and I met up with my mom's cousin. My Grandma Bonnie is from southwest Louisiana and all of her family still lives there. Her niece, Elsie, who is 78 years old, took us on a tour of Lafayette. Here we are:

She was a delight and took us all over the place. Elsie used to lead tours in Lafayette so she knows everything about the place. She even personally knows many of the people who the streets are named after. Very interesting.

She took us to this very old Catholic church that had a 450+ year old live oak tree in the front:

It was incredible:

I mean this thing was gigantorm! I'm not Catholic, so I don't know much about anything, but she gave us some good info :)

We also went to the University of Louisiana Lafayette campus to look around. Home of the Rajun Cajuns! My Grandma Bonnie went to school there. On campus there is a huge swamp just right in the middle of everything. OSU friends, it's Louisiana's version of Theta Pond. Here it is:

Very swampy. Lots of Spanish Moss, live oaks and cypress trees:

But very cool to see so up close:

But unlike Theta Pond, this campus has live alligators in here instead of swans:

You could feed them with this dry "alligator food" that you buy in the student union and they just swarm:

We probably saw 6 to 7 ish.

I didn't even have the zoom on when I took this. We were that close:

Yeesh!!!:

That was the best part of the tour....seeing the alligators. My weekend was complete after that.

After our tour, thanks to Tour Guide Elsie, we grabbed some lunch at Jason's Deli and then took a long snooze in the hotel.

All in all, this weekend was filled with eating, driving around, napping, apartment hunting, and taking in the sights of our future home. We are really excited to move and feel blessed at the opportunities Jamie's job has given us to move to different places and meet lots of people!

Here are a couple shots that Kim sent us when she was Leia-sitting. A trip to Sonic...Leia's favorite: