Chomp chomp

Over this last weekend, we hopped in the car and scooted ourselves over to Moss Point which is about 30 minutes east of Biloxi.  We went with our friends the Shurtliffs and had ourselves a great time visiting the alligator farm. 

For only $5/adult, we got to hold a baby alligator, see all the big gators, and walk out on the bayou boardwalk.  Emerson just loved all the excitement and kept pointing at and talking to the gators.

  

We got to see a bunch of grumpy gators up close...

Emerson wasn't so sure about touching the baby gator.  He eventually did, but he was mostly just content with watching. 

Only a visit from Louis himself could've made our trip to the gators better:

We even saw a few gators that were up for a small brawl (thanks for the show, Vance!) Enjoy this short clip that includes some girly screams and a few laughs:

We had such a fun time and recommend this as a great little adventure for all. 

And finally, true to form, here is Will exhibiting his fun sense of humor alongside the ashtray:

the first time i was too tall

Words can't describe an experience I had with the stairwell the other day, so I decided to draw a picture for y'all.  It is titled "Bonk."

First though, a little image to introduce the setting:

I should also note that I rarely try to go under the stairs, but E was pushing my buttons so I took a shortcut.

Enjoy.

In Which Emerson Slides Better Than Oysters Slide

Date night last night gave us another thing on our Biloxi Bucket List to mark complete.  We ate at the Half Shell Oyster House in downtown Biloxi.  We ordered a platter that gave us 3 each of 4 varieties of oysters. 

The flavors were intense and yummy and the presentation was beautiful.  The only issue was that darn oyster in each one.  I haven't quite acquired taste for oysters yet, although Will thought they were good.  And it's a good thing he was there to help me out because I had trouble getting down just one of each kind.  Not my thing.  The other dishes we ordered were fantastic, especially the cinnamon roll bread pudding with spiced rum sauce.  {snarf}

In other news, we took Emerson to the park today.  I've taken him a few times before, but Will joined us today and E had a blast playing with him.  He went down all the slides and had so much fun running around.

This little daredevil likes to climb up the slides, too.

And so we help him be dangerous.

A clip of E sliding down a couple slides:

Will was being goofy with Emerson which was apparently hilarious.  We were happy to catch a good portion of his cute giggle:

Biloxi Bucket List

A few weeks ago, Will and I realized that our time in the south is starting to dwindle.  We decided to come up with a bucket list so as to make sure we do everything we want to while here.

• Ride the carousel at the mall (E has been eying it since we got here.)
• Visit the alligator farm
• Eat at the Half Shell Oyster House and The Shed again
• Go to the blue water beaches, eg. Alabama, Florida
• Have family pictures taken at the beach (easier said than done now that the beaches are filthy a la Isaac)
• Go to the temple
• Watch "The Frog Princess" (We saw this when it came out and didn't particularly like it, but thought it would be fun to give it another chance now that we have experience in the south.) **UPDATE: We loved it!
• Visit Fairhope, Alabama (recommended to me by my old boss)
• Go to Mugshots monthly (August, September, October, November) (For those who don't know, Mugshots is a burger restaurant that has been awarded Best Burger in Mississippi for 5 years in a row.  The award speaks truth.  We have yet to find a better burger anywhere.  We'll greatly miss Mugshots.)
• Do the local driving tours of downtown Biloxi
• Buy a Dusti Bonge print (Dusti was a local abstract artist whose art I have fallen in love with.)
• Survive a hurricane.

This list may still be amended, but I think we have most everything listed that we want to do.  We have three months left and we know it will fly by as quickly as the first eight have.

Isaac

In coming to Biloxi, we knew we might have to deal with hurricanes, but we didn't really expect to.  We hoped we could just slide through this year coming out un-hurricane-scathed. 

Boy, were we wrong.

Isaac started as a tropical storm and stayed that way for a long time.  We thought we'd just get a really big rain storm.  But then he started to veer this way and that way, and then he decided to target our house.  That was when we were glued to the tv and started thinking maybe we would have to plan on being cooped inside without power for a bit.  Then we realized that being without power would mean no A/C, no hot water, no stove, no cold milk, and no Lightning McQueen. 

Huh.  Then we considered maybe evacuating because, honestly, who wants to be in a 90 degree house with a toddler who won't be able to go outside.  Not us.

So we thought and prayed and considered all the options and costs associated with them and finally decided around midnight on Monday night to leave.  After packing up and moving some stuff off the floors and towards the back of the house, we got to bed at 2am and then woke up at 6am to drive away.  We drove to Dallas and then flew to Phoenix and made a great vacation out of it all.  Emerson did especially well considering the 20 hours total driving time plus two red eye flights.

We sure showed Isaac, although he did get the best of our window sills and entry way.  They are water-damaged a bit and I had to clean the mold off the floor and baseboards.  The towels we left in the seals were definitely dirty, wet, and mildewy. 

Overall, we are curious what it would have been like to stay and see the wind and rain, but we're glad we left and had some worry-free fun with family. 

And I brought our camera to take some hurray-we're-away-from-Isaac pictures, but alas, I forgot to even take it out of the bag.  Sorry, Mom.  Instead, here's a phone pic showing proof that we pitstopped somewhere in Texas.