Rockin' It Out Louisiana Style

After my huge ordeal, I don't think I had EVER been happier in my life to be home. For serious.

The first thing I did upon waking up in the morning was to go through all of the books that had arrived at my mom's house that I had won in contests or that had been sent to me by publishers. If you're interested, you can check out the blog post about that in Brizmus Blogs Books.

Then I explored my Mom's new house, which was just BEAUTIFUL! Apparently, she had done a ton of work, and you could so tell as the house was just SO HER!


I got to spend several days lounging around reading, doing next to nothing. It was fantabulous! I also got all of the rest of my Christmas shopping done and presents wrapped and it was really just fantastic! :-) And my grandparents came in, and I got to beat them at Scrabble! Yay! I am TERRIBLE at Scrabble - I was therefore sort-of shocked about the whole winning thing. And I got to hang out with Russell and Miranda, who are both living in Pineville now, and it was SO great to get to spend time with my little bromeo (wow, haven't used that word in AGES, since we lived in Holiday Park).

Then Kristen finally arrived (YAY!!!! Always so much fun to see my sister!! :-) ), and with my Mom, we took a trip up to Natchitoches to see the Christmas lights (I almost just typed Kristen lights), which were absolutely beautifully amazing and wonderful!

I hadn't been to see the lights since high school, since I lived in Natchitoches, and I had these amazing memories about how awesome they are. Kristen was afraid that we were maybe going to be disappointed, but we absolutely weren't. They were just AMAZING!!!!


We met this very nice man who reminded us of Charles Martin (our uncle), who was so nice to take some pictures of the three of us. He was so professional about it that we thought he must be a photographer for a living or something. He informed us that he was, indeed a photographer by profession. A photographer of dead people. He was happy to have some living subjects, he said. :-P Interesting. . .


We found a sled, and Kristen and I just HAD to have a picture in it, as we have on of us when we were very little sitting in a very similar sled (if, I am not mistaken, also in Natchitoches at the lights). I wish I had the old picture to scan and put next to this one.

Anyhow, our trip to Natchitoches was a success - we had SO much fun all hanging out together - even if dinner was not a success. All of the restaurants were closed by the time we finally got around to looking for one. Luckily, I had some plain, cold (sauceless) spaghetti in a Ziploc bag, and we munched on it on the way home so that we weren't too hungry.

After Natchitoches, it was time for CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be sure to check back soon! :-)

The Long Journey Home

So, finally, here I am, and it's update time!! (I know this is a long entry, but it''s a funny story, if you want to read it!)

As most of you know, I went home to Louisiana for the Christmas holidays, and I had an absolutely FABULOUS time!!!! When I finally got there. Which was not an easy task.

I arrived in Houston a little bit early (what a shocker, right?), and so I was sitting at the gate, waiting for my flight to Alexandria, which was supposed to leave in 5 minutes, when they announced something terrible: my flight was being canceled due to weather. What weather, I wondered? Sure, it was rainy and a little bit foggy, but I had numerous times taken off in weather far worse than that.

Anyhow, so they put me on the next flight out, and while I was very tired and jet lagged, I couldn't complain - I was just excited to be going home. And then they announced that my next flight was canceled because they had no flight attendants. And the flight after that was full, so I got them to put me on it on standby and to confirm me on a seat on the flight after that. Fine, no problem.

I didn't make the standby. The flight took off. They somehow canceled my next reservation, but because the flight attendant was nice, she managed to get me on the flight. After sitting in the runway for about half an hour, they announced that there was too much fog in Alexandria, and the flight was canceled. We got out of the plane to discover that the flight after that, the last flight of the day, was also canceled.

By this point in time, it was about 3 in the morning in France, I hadn't slept at all on the plane, they weren't going to be paying for a hotel (since the flights had been canceled for weather), and really, I was just ready to get home. So, I decided to cancel the last leg of my flight and drive.

My mom was not happy. It was rainy and foggy, she said (for the record, this was an understatement - it was so foggy that you couldn't see a foot in front of you and the rains were hurricane torrential), and I was jet-lagged and tired (also an understatement). Still, she was arranging a car for me, when a very nice man, who had been on all of my canceled flights with me, asked me what I was doing.
He got excited about the idea of driving, and since he already had a car reserved in Alexandria, got the reservation changed to Houston so that we could drive together.

My mom, of course, freaked out (she had recently seen the movie Taken), and interrogated him as if we were in high school and it was my prom date. She even went so far as to ask if she could call his wife (which she luckily did not do). She wanted to talk about where he was from and where he went to school and where he lived and what he did for a living and any other possible question she could think of. By the end of it all, we knew his entire life story. Poor guy, right?

He then proceeded to drive me all the way home. I guess he could tell that it was probably not a smart idea to let me drive, given how delusionaly tired I was. So he drove, and every time I offered to drive, he said it was no big deal and just kept driving. I think he was just happy to be getting there on time (he was headed to Marksville for work) and to have someone to drive in the car with him, to keep him company.


I seriously don't think I could have gotten any luckier. So I got home at about 3 or 4 in the morning, then somehow woke up at 8 the next morning (ohhhh, jet lag), and I don't think I have ever in my life been more grateful to anyone than I was to Jason. Than I am to Jason, I should say.

So anyhow, my attempt at getting home was, well,. . .interesting. But I made it!

Stay tuned, because next time (which will be soon), I'll start writing about being home and Christmas!!!!

Note: I borrowed the pictures from random sites without permission. Also, the rain and fog pictures are NOTHING compared to what it was actually like.

A White January?

So Wednesday morning, while I was at work in Antony, it started snowing. And when it finished snowing, there was a beautiful sheet of white covering EVERYTHING. It was SO gorgeous! Nothing like the beauty of Montreal, but still, I was in snow lover's heaven. :-) And I was SO excited to get back to Paris and get my camera to take a picture of the beautiful snow. After all, if it was white in Antony, which is literally, like, 2 seconds from Paris, it had to be beautiful white in Paris, right? Wrong. It was disgusting and gray and not really snow-covered at all.

So, alas, no picture.

Then I woke up yesterday morning and this morning and looked out my window, and everything was white. But it wasn't a pretty, beautiful white like in Antony. It was a disgusting, grayish dirty white snow.

So, still, no picture. :-(

Anyhow, I've got tons of updating to do about the Christmas holidays, but that won't happen today. I didn't really take any pictures, so I'm going to try to wait for Kristen to get hers to me (hint, hint, hint - KRISTEN!!). Be looking for a big update soon, though!