Mardi Gras

Well it's Mardi Gras season here in the south. There are lots of bizarre traditions that the locals have, but few that the locals can explain why they do it! Like why do they throw such things as moon pies and panties (yes, REALLY!) during the parades?

Anyway, we went to our first real Mardi Gras parade last night. No pics of the parade, but here's a few of us at the gas station before going downtown. As you can tell, it was a little chilly.


Today we went downtown for the big parade. Being a sponsor of the parade (not US, but C's company) has it perks. We went down early and had reserved parking and got to have lunch in the VIP area. We didn't have to worry about staking out our spot along the parade route, as we had a VIP area section off that we were able to use. This allowed C to wander off and check out all the cool floats and krewes before they started the parade. The kids had a great time, we collected even more beads for our growing collection and even managed to grab a few moon pies...but, alas, no panties for C!


Check out our haul!

E is holding a "dog" made out of a broken string of beads, given to her and made by a 10 year old boy next to us at the parade.