LIVING

Sometimes life starts to feel a little boring.You get complacent with your safe day to day activities and decide you need a little excitement. What to do? How about a little Alligator Wrasslin’ or some Alligator Kissin’? We visited Kliebert’s Turtle and Alligator Farm in Hammond, Louisiana and it was awesome. When you walk in to the main building the funky smell of reptiles is almost overwhelming. The bathrooms are disgusting. This might sound bad but isn’t that what you want

Our family likes seafood a lot but my kids have never been able to try a lot of fresh seafood since we live in the landlocked state of Utah. We met someone at church who insisted that we go to a fresh seafood buffet with him at White’s Seafood and Steakhouse. We are glad we did. We were able to sample crab, snow crab, prawns, crawfish, and a huge variety of other seafood. We loved the boiled stuff. I was really excited to let our kids try a bunch of new foods that they hadn’t

Streetcars, one of the many things that New Orleans is famous for. Some of our friends recommended that we take the St. Charles line to rest our feet and see some of the pretty areas in New Orleans and we listen to our friends so we hopped on a street car. Can you tell which of our kids liked the streetcar ride and which of them might have been a bit underwhelmed. The St Charles line takes you through the Garden District where you will find beautiful architecture and…….yep yo

We had the great opportunity to visit a plantation while we were in New Orleans and there were quite a few to choose from. Marisa wanted to go to the Laura Plantation because she had heard the stories told in the tours were amazing. The plantation house isn’t as majestic looking as the house at Oak Alley but it was still impressive. It was formed and created kind of like a prefabricated house. They cut the wood and planned how the house would be built. This picture shows the

Like I said in my previous article, when I told people I was going to visit The French Quarter, the first thing they talked about was the food. “You have to go to Cafe Du Monde.” Make sure and have a “Po’ Boy.” “Make sure to eat at _______.” It was hard to follow all of the suggestions as we were there for one day, and our kids got filled up so fast that we didn’t even try everything we had planned. We still got to experience some new foods and it was a lot of fun. The first

The French Quarter is the oldest neighborhood in New Orleans. It was founded in 1719 and most of the existing architecture in the neighborhood was built in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. It’s my experience that if you ask someone what to do there, the first thing they mention is the food. The second is the best locations and streets to party. I will talk more about the food tomorrow. The neighborhood is very unique and has a lot of charm. If you have younger children li

After spending 5 weeks in Texas we moved on to Louisiana. We usually don’t make reservations until a day or two before we move on but when we left Houston, Marisa and I decided to just start driving and find a campground while we drove. Marisa was led to a great spot at Fairview-Riverside State Park in Madisonville, La. Wow is was pretty. We are about 45 minutes from New Orleans and next to a river. There is a sign by our campsite that says our children are slow but I assume

We have had a lot of career day opportunities while we have been on our year long trip and while we were in Houston Reece had a good opportunity to see what a landscape architect does. He worked with him for 4 days and even though it was a lot of it was hard work, he really liked it, especially because of all of the money he earned. Marisa’s brother Cameron got a degree in landscape architecture and he owns the company Set Roots LLC in Houston. This is what Cameron looks like

One of Marisa’s favorite childhood memories of living in Houston was going out to the pond to catch turtles. She knew that Madeline would love it so she took her out to experience the same wonder that she used to feel. They caught a turtle to have as a pet for a few days while we visited family. I refused to let them keep it. We are not collecting animals while we live in a fifth wheel. Maybe we can get one later. They went back and released the little turtle back into the wi

I have mixed feelings about zoos in general. I am an animal lover and on the one hand I hate seeing majestic animals that are captive behind bars. On the other hand many zoos do a lot of research and activities that help animals throughout the world. I think it also gives people an opportunity to have an experience with exotic animals that might make them appreciate nature more and have a stronger desire to protect Mother Nature. Our favorite exhibits were the cats. There was