Happy Mardi Gras!

It's Mardi Gras to me now, but growing up I'm not sure I knew what or when Mardi Gras was. We knew the day before Ash Wednesday as Shrove Tuesday - marked by a pancake dinner at church. Once, when I was about M's age, a friend of my mom's went to Mardi Gras and brought back some beads for me. I thought they were the neatest thing. I'm still not sure I knew much about Mardi Gras.

Fast forward to college - junior year our spring break coincided with Mardi Gras and the school organized a trip to Mardi Gras. My roommates and I all went. We got beads, beads and more beads - enough so our necks hurt when we finally untangled all the beads and got them off.

And then I got a job in Louisiana - not in NO, but close enough to visit. We went down to NO several times before kids - and after kids we still went to parades in our town. M vaguely remembers parades - probably some combo of Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day parades. A, however, obviously doesn't remember it at all - though he went to a Mardi Gras parade - at less than a month old!

Both kids have had beads to play with all their lives. They went through stages of loving to put them on and off and on again. Now, though, we have a bin of beads in the basement, but mostly they are ignored. They wore them tonight, but only because I put them on them.

We had a king cake yesterday and today. M thought there should be a prize for getting the baby. No, it doesn't work that way. Traditionally, the person who finds the baby has to bring the next king cake. Since that wasn't viable here, we decided on whoever got the baby has to take out the compost. Well, M got the baby - he wasn't wild about it, but he took out the compost. Then since M got the baby early, he put the baby back in and then D got it. He gets to take out the compost the next time.

We had our pancake dinner at church tonight. Yummy, blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup/sauce.