Reisinger Road Trip Day 10: "Houston...we have arrived home."

We left New Orleans this morning and headed to the French Quarter for a "must do"-- eating benigets at Cafe DuMont. David decided to take the kids up the ramp to see the Mississippi river, took a few pictures, and let Rebecca take a couple pics of the streetcars as well and then got a table.

We ordered benigets, orange juice and a large coffee (for David, not me). Joshua gave the french doughnuts a "thumbs up, " Christina had a few nibbles, Gabriel happily munched away on David's lap, wearing his share of powdered sugar, and Rebecca declared them, "really, really good!" Here's a couple of pictures of the kids digging in.

Then we headed down the street to Central Grocery for another "must do." David had to get a jar of olive salad, a whole muffaletta, spied a bag of chips labeled, "tomato creole spiked with real Tabasco," and got those too. Actually, the kids were getting restless, and combined with a store full of breakable glass jars, I was afraid of the worst. So David took everyone except Joshua with him to get the van (we'd had to park a few blocks away), while I waited for our order. The staff had just started making muffalettas for the day, so it took a few extra minutes. We met David on the curb, and started the drive home to Houston.

I made sandwiches on the road, and we only stopped once for gas and bathroom breaks. About 10 minutes from home, Rebecca pitched the most unbelievable fit. In between tears, we finally figured out she was terribly upset that she hadn't taken any pictures with her camera. The batteries went dead during the trip, and we didn't have the forsight to bring extras with us. She finally calmed down, but it took many gentle words and some coaxing to get her to stop crying.

We got home, David unloaded the van, and vacummed away all the signs from the long trip, the cheerios, used napkins, and empty wrappers from a million fruit snacks. Just for fun, I took a pic of the huge pile awaiting me after David brought everything inside.

I was able to get mostly everything unpacked and put back in place-- although I calculate about 8 loads of laundry awaiting me tomorrow. Gabriel was perfectly happy playing with all the toys he'd left behind. I realized watching him he'd met two minor milestones on our trip. First, he stopped crawling, and is now only walking. Secondly, he has started to shake his head to say "no." It will be interesting to see when he'll verbalize his "no" instead of just shaking his head.

I also realized how little time it took for things to be "normal" again. The kids were begging to watch TV and catch up on all the Pokemon episodes they'd missed. Being the tough mother I am, I made them upack most of their things first. Milk was spilled not once, but twice during dinner, both times by Rebecca. Ahh, home sweet home!