Who dat aksed for you?

This won't be a blog for the whole week.
It'll only be for the last 2 days.
But there's enough in the last two days to fill a good bit of space.


Sunday through Friday are lost in space, as I spent a week at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy near Boulder, Colorado. For that same reason, my brain is spent and this may be a humor-free zone.

As for NITA, it was lots of work and lots of learning, but there was snow on the ground and the views made you not want to leave.






Plus, I got to try an Orange Julius, which Professor Smith (our fave law school prof) always talked about. It was pretty good.





Because no airline could get me into Lafayette on Friday night, and we were heading to New Orleans on Sunday for a Saints game anyway, I flew into NO and we made a weekend of it.

Riley was nice enough to stay up late and meet me at the airport.
He said "Hi", then whined about being in the car seat.
Instant home feeling.
But instead of saying he didn't care to see me, we'll just say he was ready for bed because he knew Saturday would be big. Sounds plausible.


Once he woke the next morning, we went on down to the Audubon Zoo...... (please contact me if your brain doesn't automatically complete that sentence.)


It was pretty cool and windy so he bundled up/thugged out.





I won't bore you with a catalog of every animal we saw, but he was pretty nonchalantly interested in the elephants.








We had fun in the petting zoo.







Shortly in though, it was nap time.
We found a semi-quiet and shady spot by the anteaters and he slept on my shoulder for an hour while I paced the same 50 yard stretch of sidewalk.


(my back is still reminding me of it)


That was all he needed to be in full cheesy mode.

The highlight of his day was when we stopped to eat lunch.
There was an empty stage in the dancehall themed room that tended to attract small kids.
He spent at least half an hour running dancing and playing up there, and held his own among some much bigger kids.






He then had fun poking at the face of a bronze gorilla, but was wise enough not to do the same with the real thing.







He even semi-cooperated for a pic with Nanny.





Since we bought a membership to the zoo and aquarium, and we want to feel like we're getting as much out of it as possible, we bypassed part of the zoo and headed over to the aquarium later in the afternoon.

The penguins and otters were tired and resting, but fish always swim, so Riley had a blast.
As soon as he realized where we were, he ran to the first display.
We could have stayed there for hours and he would have been fine.





He cooperated for a shark jaw pic with Nanny, but tried his best to be sure that none with his parents came out any good.





The really cool thing about being there later in the afternoon was that he had the kids' area almost to himself. Usually there are dozens of big kids keeping skrimps like him off of things, but not this week.





His favorite part was the fish tank you can stand in the center of.






He's still a little short to do it on his own, but Daddy's always willing to sit down for a little while.





On the way back to the car he got his first (non ring pop) sucker, and made the appropriate mess.





He was spent at the end of the day and didn't care how goofy he looked in his sleep clothes.





Sunday we headed back downtown for the most anticipated game of the NFL season thus far.

Saints v Giants, both undefeated.




Unfortunately, his nap time started about 5 minutes before kick off.
That's fine though, because he got to miss this incredibly ignorant digital display while the Pride of Acadiana was playing the pregame show.


go ahead, read it again, it took me a second to catch.


Speaking of the band, they also played a Halloween themed show with the Saintsations and a bunch of high school dancers.
About halfway through I said to Joan, "At least they aren't even attempting Thriller, since the Southern band has already played here."

I know, I know, that was an obvious jinx because were were promptly ?treated? to the whitest, feeble-ist version of Thriller ever seen. It almost embarrassed Riley right out of his UL hat.





Once he was awake, he had a great time, as long as he wasn't in a seat watching a football game.
He is now a big fan of riding escalator rails.

We switched out entertainment duties and were each able to catch good parts of what ended up being a completely unexpected blow-out.

It's work bringing him to things like that, but still worth it to me.
Even though he didn't watch the game, Riley had a great weekend being among some of the most important people in his life.




and we had fun too.