Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.

Saturday, August 10th started with a really nice morning with David's Aunt Pam and Uncle David.  They have a beautiful home and it was so nice to stay in their house and escape the RV for a few days. 

We spent the morning at the Civil Rights Institute in downtown Birmingham.  The kids pay really great attention and we work hard to spend time reading with them and explaining each of the exhibits.  The kids were particularly interested in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in 1963.  The church is directly across the street from the museum and 4 little girls were killed in the bombing in 1963; one of the little girls was named Addie.  These kinds of stories make this part of our US history "real" to the kids. 

After the museum we drove a little bit up the hill to Vulcan Park.  The Vulcan is the world's largest cast iron statue cast from iron.  The statue is of the Roman god Vulcan; the god of fire and forge and is 56 feet tall.  The kids didn't have a ton of patience for the Vulcan because we had pushed lunch to long and they were hangry.  In case you are unfamiliar with the term, hangry is when you are so hungry you are angry.

We found a cute lunch spot called O'Carr's Delicatessen.  I liked it a lot.  The menu boasts two things.  1. they sell 2000 pounds of chicken salad a week and 2. they have the best milk shake in town.  We had both.  I thought they were both delicious.

Whenever we get in the car the kids want to know where we have programmed the car's gps to take us.  Yesterday they just wanted it to take us back to their great aunt and uncles.  So we spent the afternoon with uncle David and aunt Pam while the kids splashed in their pool for a couple of hours.  They have a diving board so we worked on our back dives and Dagny practiced both her front and back flips. 

About dinner time Ed and Liz McLain came over with their 3 boys again and the kids had a great time playing outside.  David and Pam are very fun grandparents to the boys and have all kinds of great ride around toys including a motorized police car.  My crew has never had the chance to drive one of these little cars, and while to big I am sure, they took turns driving all around the drive way and had a really good time.

Another fun feature are the tiny little frogs that live on the property.  You guessed it, Dagny collected many and had a really good time caring for them while we were there.  David and Pam continued to take great care of us and we all had a nice dinner together as a family.  We are hopeful that we can convince them to come our way soon and allow us to take them all skiing in Colorado.  It was great to be together and we would like to see them all more often.

For weeks Addie has been begging for uninterrupted sleep.  The motorhome is not big and every morning she is awoken by her siblings.  Last night she had her wish come true.  She went to bed about 8:30 and we allowed her to sleep in this morning until 9:30.  You could tell she needed it and she felt much better. 

We had breakfast with David and Pam again this morning and said goodbye at about 11am to get back on the road.  We needed to log over 5 hours to get to New Orleans.  We are staying in the French Quarter RV Resort just a few blocks away from Canal and Bourbon Streets.  Urban camping is really quite funny because it is bare bones concrete site with hook ups and not a lot more.  This RV park is really nice because it is crazy clean and well cared for and perfect for us for the next 3 days. No pond, trees, mini golf or jumping pillow but it is steps from all we want to see in New Orleans.

We were approaching hangry again so we made our way to Mulate's for dinner.  We picked it because we wanted Cajun food, zydeco music and a kid-friendly atmosphere.  The band played stating at 7 and my kids LOVED it!  There were enough adults there who clearly regularly dance there and some of them even took the kids out onto the dance floor and taught them a few dances.  The kids had a great time on the dance floor, as did David and I, dancing with the family in countless different configurations.