A Deeper Life: Girls Day Out in NOLA

I've got the greatest friends in the world. No really. I do. Three of my best friends from college took the time and effort to come all the way down to Lafayette, Louisiana to visit me and come play in Cajun Country. I am so undeniably thankful for Karen, Kendall and Lindsay for coming to see me, and I love you three so very dearly! It'll be one of my last girls weekends before Sweet Pea arrives, and I was thankful it was spent with such fabulous ladies!

Lindsay arrived Thursday evening and I picked her up at the hotel to head to the airport to get Karen and Kendall. Long story short, their United flight was delayed because their plane was low on break fluid and wouldn't have been able to land on our runway. So all of a sudden, we see at least 15 emergency vehicles show up on the runway ready for this plane to land...and land badly. The plane ended up diverting to New Orleans and the final flight into Lafayette was cancelled. So Kendall and Karen got a comped room in NOLA and they were unbelievably happy to have their feet on solid ground after a very scary flight! It's never good when your pilot comes over the intercom saying, "In my 15 years of flying, never have I seen this happen!" Yikes.

Luckily, we were planning on spending the day in New Orleans on Friday anyway, so we picked up the girls at their hotel that morning.

First stop: Cafe du Monde!!

Kendall and Lindsay pre-beignet nomming:

Me and Karen, ready to dig in to the powdered sugar deliciousness:

On a sugar high and happy as can be:

Our theme of the day was "We have no agenda", so we just randomly walked around the French Quarter, browsing in and out of stores and nasty shops. Goodness, there is so much to see in that crazy city!

Walking around New Orleans--this is the St. Louis Cathedral:

My beautiful Big and Karen:

This little cutie was in a Voodoo shop we went to:

Lindsay was on a mission to find the Zatarain's man, but she had to settle for the food boxes instead:

Creeper statue that we found in the voodoo store:

I'm telling you, this city is freaky!

We enjoyed this fun band right outside the St. Louis Cathedral. They were really talented and fun to watch. But since it was raining, we headed inside pretty quickly as to not get too wet:

The inside of St. Louis cathedral:

For whatever reason, we found ourselves getting the church giggles big time while we were in there and made ourselves leave. We're grown women who just couldn't contain our laughter. Hey, we were just having a good time :)

One of the fabulous New Orleans street performers:

He was really sassy and fun to watch.

The rain started to pick up big time, so we stopped at the first place we could find and had some lunch. It was Cafe de M....can't remember the rest of it, but it sure was yummy! We dined on red beans and rice, muffalettas, roast beef sandwiches, and jambalaya. It was all flavorful and delicious.

Karen and Lindsay at lunch:

Me and Kendall on the other side of the table:

It finally quit raining and we were able to enjoy shopping a little bit more. We found the cutest clothing store called "Sweet Pea & Tulip", so I just had to get a picture with the sign since we've been calling our little angel "Sweet Pea":

I found this t-shirt fitting for my family, because we're big cat people:

Another fabulous street performer:

We were all really relieved that the little dog was indeed a fake and not standing in the middle of the street.

We were hoping that since there was a 30 week preggo woman in our group (me) that we wouldn't be heckled by any New Orleans creepers, but boy were we wrong!! The creepiest guy was this crazy man who screamed "I wanna be yo' baby's mother effing godfather!" I think all four of us gave him the "you're a sicko" look! Eww. Another guy yelled at me that I'm having a boy. And a few skankily dressed ladies screamed at me saying they want the "preggers lady to come here" and that they wouldn't hurt me...umm...no thank you. You just can't control the crazies on Bourbon Street. I don't know if any of those people have ever had a mommy. Or Jesus. Poor people.

We made our way to Canal street, did a little shopping, and was then on a mission for some coffee for an afternoon pick-me-up.

Finally, we found a Community Coffee where we got some coffee and went to the bathroom...praise Jesus!

Kendall and Karen, relaxing in the coffee shop: