mississippi

From New Orleans we drove to Mississippi to visit Mark's mother and step-father. They live on the Gulf Coast between the beach and Bay of St Louis. Unfortunately their house was severely damaged by the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina (think 12ft wall of water coming through the house!), but fortunately they had insurance and have now rebuilt their lovely home. It is encouraging to see that there is a lot of reconstruction going on in the area including some of the beautiful old houses along the beachfont. Many of the grand old oak trees have survived and although they are looking a little sparse, it is great to see that new growth is emerging. Those that couldn't be saved have been turned into some pretty amazing wood sculptures! We had a nice relaxing time - talking, reading, swimming at the beach, taking in a show and a couple of meals at the local casinos and catching up with family at a Sunday BBQ. We also made a visit to the nearby NASA Stennis Space Center where they perform engine testing for the Space Shuttle (and previously for the Saturn V rockets of the Apollo missions).

new orleans

We spent 2 days in New Orleans. The city, French Quarter and Garden District were relatively unscathed by Katrina (mostly broken windows and damaged trees - no flooding), so the history and character of those areas remains intact. We stayed at a wonderful old hotel in the French Quarter and did lots of walking! We caught a street car up St Charles Ave past some fabulous old houses, Loyola and Tulane Universities to Audubon Park & Zoo. We were impressed with the quality of the displays at the zoo, especially the "Louisiana Swamp" section where we walked on a wooden boardwalk over a re-created swamp complete with alligators and water birds. We did an evening "Ghost Tour" of the French Quarter which gave us lots of history on the city, the old buildings and the tragedies that have occurred there - although we didn't see any ghosts! We then headed for some lighter amusement taking in the colour, lights and sounds of Bourbon Street where we spent a couple of hours listening to good old-fashioned live jazz. (Sadly most of the clubs on Bourbon St now have live rock or hip-hop music instead of jazz). We also enjoyed the local foods like Crawfish Etoufee, Red Beans & Rice, Seafood Gumbo and of course Cafe Au Lait and Beignets at the famous Cafe Du Monde.

our house

Thought I'd start the blog off with a couple of recent pics of our house in Utah. After the long, cold, snowy winter it's nice to be able to spend time in the garden and enjoy dinners on our deck again. We're pretty pleased with how our landscaping turned out. We built the deck, installed the sprinkler system, designed the garden beds, laid the sod (turf) and planted all the plants ourselves. Now all we need is a couple of years growth so that it feels like a garden!

welcome

I've decided to try and keep a blog/diary of what's going on in our life so that family and friends can catch up whenever they have the time/inclination. It should help to keep you informed more often than my infreqent emails! Hopefully I can be more diligent with keeping the blog up-to-date since I only have to write about things once, rather than a couple of dozen times in separate emails. I hope you will be inspired to start your own blog so that I can keep up with you. If blogging ain't your thing, then please feel free to leave comments on my blog and/or email me occasionally so that I know that my writings aren't being wasted on cyberspace.
- Heather