Mardi Gras

We had fun celebrating Mardi Gras this year, although I didn't take too many photos. Jason had to work at dinnertime on Fat Tuesday, so we had our little celebration the day before.

Of course the house was decorated, and for dinner I made chicken sauce piquante. I also made king cake. Typically I make it from scratch, but I was sick and decided to take a shortcut involving crescent dough. It was a little flat, but it actually tasted better than my time-consuming recipe, so I might start doing that from now on. I figure if I lived in Louisiana I'd be buying my king cake from the grocery store like everyone else, so I'm still adding a little homemade touch to it by making my own with store-bought assistance. The kids were super excited to eat some since we don't give them dessert very often.

We have a GIANT bag of Mardi Gras beads I collected on my two trips to Mardi Gras in 1997 and 2001. They are mostly the green, gold and purple ones that the locals don't care about very much because they're not as intricate as some of the other ones. So they were pretty easy to come by, either because I caught them, or found them on the ground or Jason's family just handed them off to me.

I thought it would be fun for Xander to take some in for his classmates, so we counted out enough and he took them to school. Looking cute in his purple shirt, Xander informed me as we were waiting for the bus that if you bring in something about your culture you have to be prepared to talk about it. So I quickly wrote out a few things for him to share. I volunteer for his teacher on Tuesdays so she invited me in for his presentation. He did such a great job, and his friends seemed geuninely interested in what he had to say. They asked relevant questions as well.

He ended his presentation by saying, "I love Louisiana because I like to watch Billy the Exterminator." He cracks me up.