Let the festivities begin!
We opened the partying season with Halloween here in New Orleans and now visitors beware, we now begin the every day is a reason to celebrate period in New Orleans that will not stop until next summer. So be prepared. Aside from Voodoo Fest, Voodoo on the Bayou, Krewe of Boo, Voodoo Festival, and everyone and their mother throwing a party for some reason or other and everyone costuming because it was the first opportunity to do so this weekend – we have launched the season in style with WWOZ calling themselves WW Ozzy and everyone putting on the dog in some twisted fashion.
On a macro level that is, on a micro level we began Saturday morning in a time out because Tin is 19 months old and everything seems to rattle him and send him into a tailspin of no’s, but a nice long bike ride to the lakefront seemed to soothe the savage tugs inside of him. Saturday night, a Serbian friend was in town and we all went to a costume party in the warehouse district – we decided to make the entire weekend PIRATE WEEKEND:
Sunday morning we got up determined to start the day better and so we put on costumes from the get go, but Tin was having none of it, he abhored the very mention of costume and would go running into his room with the lights on his shoes that his Uncle bought him signaling a meltdown.
Someone had stolen a jack o lantern off of the front porch and smashed it down the block, it brought up the sore subject of when one neighbor’s pumpkins were all stolen and thrown into the bayou, or when the other neighbor had jack o lanterns going all down the stairs and someone smashed each one and I decided not to go into that negative place because one year someone carved all of my pumpkins and surprised us every day – so life is not all about the stupids, sometimes it is about the stupendous. We forced little Tin into a half-ass pirates costume and stopped short at the sash that made him go into a tailspin yet again and we headed to the French Quarter:
It was a huge success as Tin is obsessed with his Goodnight NOLA book and we saw all of the things that are in that book as well as in his Great Beignet book – we saw the Steamboat Natchez and walked up right as it was rolling out into the Muddy Mississippi with the paddle wheels churning round and round, we saw St. Louis Cathedral and the big clock, we saw Cafe du Monde and beignets and pralines, and we even saw a few Ralph and Roxanne’s (roaches).
Tin was just amazed by the band playing in the French Market cafe, and mesmerized by the silver man who handed him a lollipop, and then the coup de grace was the busker on the Moonwalk who let Tin touch his horn as he played the blues (Tin drew such a crowd of tourists who wanted photographs of the little boy and the old blues playing musician that the guy’s tip jar started filling up – I winked at him and said, he’s good for business, eh?):
At the end of the day, we didn’t make it across the bayou to the Fortier Park kiddie trick or treat fiesta, nor did we make it around the corner to the court where they were projecting the Saints beating the Steelers, but we did sit on the porch of the LaLa with two jack o lanterns that survived and we handed out candy and enjoyed the trick or treaters who did come by.
Argh, such a night.
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:53 am
Love the costumes–and Tin’s great with or without the sash! At first I thought the long red tresses were real, but decided from the last picture (could see dark bangs I think) that it wasn’t. It’s a great color on you though.
November 2nd, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I wore that color for 16 years Alice and was a super natural redhead, but alas, it is expensive and time consuming and so I went back to my ahem natural color (whatever that is) with some highlights thrown in. Leave it to you to zoom right to the hair!