D-Day...New Orleans Style

Pop quiz! How many of you out there knew that the National World War II Museaum was located right here in New Orleans (besides my parents, who were just there a few weeks ago!)? Yeah, I didn't know that either, until we moved here. It was originally just the National D-Day Museaum, but has since picked up the rest of the war, so to speak. So what better way to spend D-Day then to storm the beaches of New Orleans dressed as a bunch of Germans? I can't think of a better way!


The night before the event we decided to put together something for the kids to wear to look "period." We headed over to the local thrift store to see what we could put together. The outfits are really not half bad! William's shorts were a bit on the short side, but that would have been standard in the 1940's, right? (He normally wears a size 7 for the length, but he squeezed into a 4T for the event!) Natalie even found a "German Dress," though I'm not sure it's really authentic either...

William was the star of the show! Across the street from the museaum all the reenactors set up a living history display. This meant that Tom had a chance to show off a bunch of his collection. One of the most popular things there was his motorcylce, which William is proudly modeling here in this picture. All sorts of people asked William to be in their pictures, and he was also interviewed by both a film and newpaper crew. He is such a star!

William can't wait until the day he can really drive Natalie around on the motorcycle.

But until then, he is happy to catch a ride with his dad. Tom also takes William's neighborhood friends out for rides sometimes. Once we even picked William up from school in the motorcycle. William thought that was awesome! By the way, Binky does a fantastic job of using the machine gun while in the sidecar. (FYI, we don't drive around the neighborhood with the machine gun attached!)

This is a picture of das kinder in front of a tank...perhaps a Sherman Tank? I really don't know, but the person who would has already gone to bed! It was fun to watch them unload a tank from a flatbed truck!

It looks like Natalie is trying to warn the Germans of the incoming invasion, but I know what she is really doing...singing Hannah Montana songs!!

Nothing is more father and son-like then to wear really short shorts while standing in front of some anti-aircraft artillery! Tom was going to wear his full wool uniform, but I reminded him that we lived in southern Louisiana, so go with the summer attire. So, Tom is rockin the short shorts with William.

Just hanging out on the motorcycle.

We picked up a fake wooden gun for William to play dress-up with. He already has a real gun, perhaps a K-98 (again, the person who would know is already asleep!) but it is locked up in a gun safe and he can only look at it with his dad. This is something he can use everyday!

Being a German is hard work! Well done, William, well done.

A Princess Ball

Every year Baton Rouge hosts the Red Stick (get it?) Animation Film Festival. This year, since Disney is releasing a new Princess Movie, Disney became very involved in promoting the new movie. What better way then to throw a Princess Ball! They held it at the old capital building downtown and it was free of charge, just come dressed as your favorite Disney Princess! We were so all over that.

Naturally, Natalie wanted to go as Cinderella, but William wanted to get involved too! So we picked him up a Prince Charming costume to escort his sister. What a cool big brother! I'd dare say, dashing!

A friend of ours let us know that they had room for 300 princesses (and one prince) but had given away close to 1500 tickets! So, we went early to make sure we got in. They were numbers 59 and 60. Not too bad! (For the record, I did do natalie's hair very princess-like, but a 2 hour car ride and the fact that she doesn't like things in her hair...well, you can see the end result!)

Here is Cinderella and Prince Charming in front of their castle.

William was an awesome Prince Charming! He took his role very seriously and kept making the funniest, most serious faces! Here is one example of that.

Have you seen a happier girl? I haven't!!

The royalty waiting to walk up the stairs to go to the ballroom. Fairy Godmother met them at the top of the stairs to welcome them to the royal event.

It really doesn't get much better then this for Natalie!!

When we reached the ballroom, Natalie immediately broke out in her awesomely sweet dance moves. The place quickly filled up and soon all the princesses (and one prince) would be taught an official Disney Princess Dance Routine!

Yeah...she got her moves from her mama! Hey girl...put that dress down and be a lady!

Here is William dancing in a sea of princesses. At one point they said for the Princesses to go and find a prince to dance with, and most went to their dads. William, being one of the very few boys dressed up there, became a hot commodity with the ladies, but he would have none of it!

By the stroke of midnight (or 8pm) the prince and princess were royally tired! What a wonderful ball!

Gulf Shores, A-l-a-b-a-m-a... (did you get that ConnieBean?)

We knew vacations would be kept to a minimum this year, but we still wanted to take a little family vacation get-a-way. Tom had received a $500 Travelocity Hotels gift card for a promotion at work (selling a robot...do you have robot insurance?) so we decided to look for someplace close to use the gift card. Our answer was Gulf Shores, Alabama! It is considered the beginning of the "emerald coast" which is the nickname given to the part of the gulf that isn't totally muddy from the Mississippi River run-off. The beaches are sandy white and the water is totally clear. And it is less crowded than Florida Beaches and very family friendly. It was a really great choice for us, especially since it would only be a few hours drive!

This is a picture I took of William and Natalie chillin at the hotel before we went out for the night. We got to our hotel at about dinner time, so we decided to go to dinner on the beach that night and save ocean time for the next day.

This is Natalie saying "Beach!"

I tried to get a picture of the two of them actually looking at me, but Hannah Montana was on, and I just couldn't get Binky's attention long enough for a picture!

We ate dinner literally right on the beach. It was a pretty cool place with alot of outdoor activities and entertainment. As you can see from this picture, there was only one thing William wanted to do...

Next morning after a delicious continental breakfast, we headed to the beach! But first we had to make a stop inside the giant shark mouth to buy some forgotten necessities, such as sunscreen! (whoops!) This was truly a magical shop with all sorts of treasures. For instance, lets say you were a bald person looking for a sun visor with built in hair....

Well...Look no further! You can get that here!

Or perhaps you were just looking for a few braids to add to your hair? Yeah, they got that, too. (Sorry, William. This will be blackmail for the rest of your life!)

Finally, the beach!! It was perfect weather. It was hot, sunny, with a slight breeze out of the Gulf. Water temperature was perfect, too. William could have stayed in the water all day. Not Natalie, though. She was more of a sand girl. The water made her a little bit nervous.

Here I got a nice picture of William's sexy beach pose. I know, real nice!

Finally, the only way to get Binky into the water was to have her literally wrap her legs around me and her arms around my neck!! But we had a good time regardless.

So, we spent a few days at the beach and then headed home. On the way, as promised, I got to hit up the outlet mall (woo hoo!!) and we stopped to see the battleship that is parked in Mobile Bay. Even though it is a permanent fixture, it still moves with the water, and it totally makes me seasick to be on the ship!! We even got to explore a submarine. Good times!!

Where has the summer gone?

So, it is almost the end of July, and I've totally noticed that I've neglected my blog for...well, a very long time. I guess it's gotten so bad, even Tom commented that I should probably do something about it! So, here goes...The next several posts will be me trying to show what we crazy O'Briens have been up to in the past, oh, 3 months! Enjoy!!

An All Nighter in New Orleans!

(So, my last post I mentioned that I was going to see Regis and Kelly film live in New Orleans. Here's the story!)

We decided to go really early to get in line so that we could get really good seats. So, we left Houma at about midnight on Tuesday and got there about 1am. We (Alonna and I) were the third goup of people in line, so that put us about 10 and 11 in line! We were so excited to be doing something crazy like that! We both brought sleeping bags because it actually did get really cold. It got down to about 42 degrees and that is way too cold for Southern Louisiana! But there was no sleeping! We made friends with the girls in line behind us and we looked at magazines and listened to music on ipods. It was so much fun!

At about 6am we took the sleeping bags back to the car and got ready to go into the area for the filming. We saw Kelly Ripa leave the hotel to be driven literally 20 feet to the stage!


This is the entrance to Fulton Street which is the road between Harrah's Casino and Harrah's Hotel which is where they were filming the show, and also where we waited in line.

This is a shot of the giant screen which was right by our row. Our seats were awesome. There were about 4 rows of special seating and then they started seating those of us who waited in line with tickets (first come first serve!) We were aboutthe 6th row to the left of the stage, they were amazing seats. We were right next to the sound stage where the musical guest (Jesse McCartney) performed and we could just about see up Regis and Kelly's nose!

This is a picture of our sweet homemade t-shirts we made for the show. We thought it would be warm enough to just wear them, but that didn't happen! I actually ended up putting my sweatshirt on under the t-shirt! Oh, and I have to bend down to take a picture with Alonna because she is literally 5 feet tall...I am half a foot taller than her! Don't we look wonderful? We have been up for about 28 hours by this point!

Gellman!! I love this picture because it looks like he's wearing a jester's hat! He was telling us how to be a good audience before the taping began.

And here is Regis and Kelly! When the audience died down after they came out, we stood up and "woo hoo'd" and Kelly pointed at our awesome t-shirts.

The first guest was Reggie Bush, local footbal hero for the New Orleans Saints. This is him and Regis discussing some photos that recently appeared in a magazine with Kim Kardashian. Reggie was alot smaller than I thought he would be!

The second guest was Faith Ford. She and Kelly used to have a sitcom called "Hope and Faith." Faith is also a native of Louisiana so she and Kelly went around to a bunch of local favorites and did fun things like making pralines and exploring the house from "The curious case of Benjamin Button."

The musical guest was Jesse McCarthey, which I wasn't really familiar with. But the young girls all knew him, and I finally remembered that I had seen him on an episode of Law and Order once. He was also really short!

When the show was over security did a fantastic job of hearding everyone out because they had to tape a second show at 10:30. (Ours was live, theirs...not so live!) I had a goal to get our awesome t-shirt signed, so I got Regis's attention and asked if he would sign our shirts, he was torn because he was being rushed off stage, so he said he would see what he could do. Then I saw the lady who does Kelly's make-up and recognized her as the lady who did my make-up for "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" I'm sure she remembered me. But then I saw Lori Schulweiss, affectionately nicknamed "Schully" on the show. So I yelled, "hey Schully, can you get Regis and Kelly to sign our t-shirts?" I think I took her by surprise cause I knew her nickname! She thought for a second then said, yeah hand em over! So we did. While waiting, Art Moore walked by (he's an executive producer) so we got him to take a picture with us! Our new friends from line even got in the picture with us!
But we did it! We got our shirts back and Regis and Kelly and signed them for us! Security was about to pick us up and haul us out, but we did get our shirts back! And after being awake for longer than 30 hours straight, we headed home and crashed. But it was so much fun!!

Watch for me!

To anyone interested: Live with Regis and Kelly will be shooting live in New Orleans this whole week and I have tickets to the Tuesday show. So...turn to your local broadcast of the show on Tuesday morning and see if you can spot me in the audience! Look for the loudest person there!

Has anyone in this family even seen a chicken before?

Hey Queen ConnieBean! This is my response to your latest post. enjoy!