Gimme That Shovel

More about our trip to Louisiana:

The day after Christmas, we went to the state capitol building in Baton Rouge, about 30 minutes away. It's the tallest state capitol in the U.S. so we went to the top and enjoyed the view of the Mississippi. Then we went down to the main level and saw where Huey Long got shot (very notorious politician in Louisiana). Afterwards we went to see "Coco" which is a great movie.

The bullet hole.

An artist's rendition--apparently he got shot from a stray bullet when his bodyguards were trying to pump someone else full of bullets.

On Wednesday, we babysat Katie and Felix while David and Stephanie enjoyed an overnight trip to New Orleans by themselves. Scott took the older kids to do baptisms at the Baton Rouge Temple in the afternoon and then we went together that night to do a session. Sadly, the temple has some mold problems they can't seem to fix so they're closing the temple for 14 months at the end of January to really deal with the problem.

David and Stephanie went to the World War II Museum which is apparently very large and impressive.

On Thursday, we drove down and met David and Stephanie at the Aquarium which was fairly crowded.

At the Aquarium, there was a place to go out and feed the parakeets. It was a chilly and rainy day, so I decided to stay inside with Camille. But the others went out and got lots of action with the parakeets who were also cold and were trying to go in people's coats so they could get warm. They especially liked Stephanie.

Camille tried to talk me into buying this; I said we would take a picture of her with it instead.

After the Aquarium, David and Stephanie decided to head for home and our family went to Bourbon Street to listen to some jazz and have some of the beignets that New Orleans is famous for.

We also drove a short way to a plantation which we decided we didn't want to tour. But we walked around the gardens which were impressive.

On Thursday night, we stayed in LaPlace so that on Friday we would be close to the place we were going for a swamp tour.

Friday morning was the swamp tour. It would be better to go in the spring or fall because hot or cold weather means less animal activity. But the tour guide had brought along some animals for us to look at and hold: a couple of turtles, snakes, and a baby alligator. And we also saw some raccoons, egrets, osprey, and a few little alligators.

Friday afternoon we drove back to Zachary and went on a driving tour of the refinery where David works. It's very large and very complicated and I wasn't allowed to take any pictures. I also fell asleep because I had slept so poorly the night before. But it was good to see where David works.

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