Last days in New Orleans

Last few days in New Orleans.  We had fun keeping Leo busy while Fernando and Eva packed up their stuff.  We took him to the Children's Museum twice, riding the street car one of those times.

We were going to ride the ferry also across the Mississippi River also, but it proved to be too difficult to figure out the correct place to go with the heat that day.

At the Children's Museum

Eva with her Mother's Day shirt, Fernando with his Father's Day shirt and Leo with his own special shirt.

Enjoying an ice cream at the mall

Last meal in their New Orleans house.

We arrived in New Orleans on Sunday, June 18th (Father's Day).  Tuesday night (June 20th), we had a little scare with Tropical Storm Cindy off-shore.  There were warnings there could be power outages (yikes!  in that oppressive heat that would have been rough) and possibly orders to evacuate.  Fernando and Eva found headlamps and candles they had already packed away, they gathered containers of water, and Guillermo and I went to Walmart earlier that day to pick up some food items.  We took Leo with us to Walmart and when we went back to the car after shopping, it was raining and the wind was really whipping.  Leo thought it was fun!

It rained hard almost all night long.  It sure sounded bad but in the end, the worst part of the storm seemed to be hitting further east.  The relief we felt when we realized that things weren't going to get worse was tremendous.  New Orleans is a really nice and interesting city and I'm going to miss it, but I'm sure glad Fernando and Eva don't live there anymore.  

So the following Saturday (June 24th) was the big "packing up of the U-Haul" day.  I had a fun day planned for Leo and told the rest the two of us would be back in a couple of hours.  We were going to go to an indoor playground for a while, but when we got there, it was closed and wasn't going to open for a couple of hours.  So, what to do.  What to do.  We drove to a park near their house and Leo played on the playground for a little while.  But it was so hot!!!  After a while, we got back in the car and had a snack.  Now what do we do.  It still wasn't time to go back.  So, we went to Walmart and hung out there for a while!!  It wasn't the morning we had planned, but it turned out ok.

The weather was good in the morning, but there were thunderstorms during the afternoon that delayed the loading of the truck for a while.  After Leo's nap and lunch, it was time for me to take him to the hotel we were going to be staying in that night.  We packed up a few things and off we went.  Leo looked absolutely precious pulling his little ladybug suitcase into the hotel!!!  The staff just loved seeing him pulling it along.  We unload our stuff into the room and open the door between our rooms and Leo had a blast running back and forth between rooms.  It was such a perfect set-up.  Then we changed into our bathing suits and we went down to the pool.  The pool was really nice and had floats and pool noodles to use.  It was sprinkling just a little when we got to the pool but that was ok.  Leo had fun floating on the pool noodles and floats and sitting on the steps and splashing me.  Then it started raining a little too hard so we packed up and went back to the room.  A little later, everyone came by the hotel (except Guillermo) and we went out to get some dinner.  Fernando took his to-go so he could also take Guillermo's food back to him.  After we ate, I dropped Eva and Leo back off at the hotel and then went back to the house to finish up whatever needed to be done to get the house ready to leave.  We were totally finished by 9pm and we all went back to the hotel.  We stayed at the Hampton Inn Elmwood - one of our most favorite Hampton Inns ever!