Firsts & Thirty Firsts

June 6 is a big day in our family every year, and seems to be getting bigger every year. Now that Tyler is old enough to grasp the concept of birthdays, I often think he is more excited for our birthdays than he is for his own sometimes. So with Garrett's birthday, it was no exception and we had to make it fun (for Tyler's sake, if nothing else!!). So instead of big presents, we decided to spend a day with fun activities. So we started off by heading to the French Quarter for beignets at Cafe du Monde.

But, we didn't go for any old way of getting there...we decided to make Garrett's 31st birthday our first trip on the old streetcar! So, we headed uptown and parked on St. Charles and caught the streetcar there and rode it all the way to the French Quarter.
The boys were impressed to say the least. It's the most well behaved they've been in transit anywhere lately! Perhaps I need a streetcar of my own to taxi them around in, maybe then we'd have less fits when we're traveling. :) They took in all the sights & sounds of New Orleans while they {practically} hung out the windows as we traveled. Very safe, I know. There's definitely a reason for the sign that says "Keep head & arms inside car". They've obviously had children like mine on board before. But it was definitely way more entertaining to them than the DVD player in our car. Go figure.



So we reached the end of the line {for us anyways} and hopped off and took a stroll through the heart of the French Quarter on our way to Cafe du Monde. (I took lots and lots of pictures that day, so I kind of tried to condense things into storyboards instead--but somehow I still had a lot! Click any of them to see them bigger.)
Saturdays in the Quarter are definitely heavy with tourist traffic...and by the looks of things, we sure fit in with all of the tourists!! I'm sure no one would have guessed that we live here...we don't have an accent, we {or I should say I} took pictures of everything, we had never ridden the streetcar, etc... But hey, nothing wrong with being a tourist for a day, right?!

So we reached our destination and found out that we would get our beignets much quicker if we got them to go and ate them outside. Fine by me! They are usually best with hot chocolate, but on a Louisiana June day, drinking hot chocolate outside and eating hot beignets while sweating it out doesn't quite sound like a good time. So, instead we compensate by drinking nice cold {thick} chocolate milk. It seems to do the trick just fine!!

My brood all enjoying their beignets and chocolate milk:
And Sammy was so concerned when he heard the whistle of the steamboat on the river behind us!
mmmmm, yum!

A hit with the entire group--both young and old!!
Finished the beignets, took a quick walk past the cathedral and headed back to catch the streetcar going home.

The return trip was exciting too because Tyler finally got to ride the RED streetcar. There are red and green ones. And yes, you would have thought he would be thrilled beyond belief to ride the green one, but for some reason, the red one just fascinated him. I was just thrilled because it was air conditioned...the green ones are not. And unfortunately, there aren't as many pictures of Tyler on the streetcar as Sam because Tyler was always sitting next to the window {with his head and other appendages hanging out} and would hardly look at me!
So with a breakfast of beignets in our tummies, we hopped in our car and headed home. But not without having sno-balls for lunch!! Yeah, pretty much...we went straight from beignets to sno-balls. I think that's a pretty nice way to celebrate a birthday, huh? Since you wouldn't do that any other day of the year, right?!

And after our "lunch", we headed home and Sam took a nap and Garrett took Tyler golfing {real golfing at a real course!} for the first time. Of course I have no pictures of that since I was not there. But it sounds like Tyler was a trooper and stuck it out pretty well for a kid his size! And I was at home busy preparing a feast and dessert for a little surprise get together I had planned. I almost had it all pulled off without Garrett thinking a thing until 6:30 rolled around {people were going to start showing up at 7:00} and Tyler said {in a very serious tone, I might add...} "Now, Dad...we just have one more surprise for your birthday. But I can't tell you what it is. I'll just tell you that it's people. But I can't tell you their names, just that we invited them over." Nice. Well, at least he was surprised by who was coming over, even if he wasn't surprised by the fact that they were coming over? Right? We had a fun evening with friends {again, no pictures...too busy chatting!!}, and had a great day together as a family. Doesn't get much better than that!

So Garrett's 31st was a big success with our family's first streetcar ride and Tyler's first real golf outing. And I can't help but think how grateful I am that Mr. GT came into this world 31 years ago...