Week 23

Mardi Gras celebrations are in full swing.  One of our LSUA softball players (who comes for FHE every week) was in the LSUA Mardi Gras parade on Wednesday, so we went to see her (middle girl on the tailgate).  Suddenly we recognized a woman from our branch who is the band director at the school in Marksville--her band was marching in this parade.  Even though this parade wasn't big and fancy, every float/wagon that went by was throwing beads.  That seems to be the main purpose of the parades (at least the family friendly ones don't have another agenda).

Our "bead haul" from LSUA parade

For the big parades around the state, floats are created by KREWES.  A krewe is a social group with a membership fee.  It can be a very large fee and those krewes pay parade/costume designers to make their floats for Mardi Gras parades. New Orleans has lots of that kind of krewe, and some of them are quite famous.  Or it can be a smaller fee and they build the floats themselves.  The krewes also have Mardi Gras balls and other celebrations throughout the season.

On Saturday we went downtown to the Alexandria Children's Parade.  This one is in the day, and the children of the krewe members are the ones throwing the beads, cups, toys, and candy (with help from some adults).  It was actually very fun and kids come with bags or baskets to collect all the items they catch.  Most of the floats are playing jazzy music, and there were the requisite number of bands and dancers.  Pictures below of that parade.  At the end you'll see me wearing that day's catch of beads, and we weren't ever trying that hard to snag them.  Next to me is a pile of uncaught beads someone pushed into a pile.  (The adult krewe parade was today, so we didn't go.)

To end our first Mardi Gras celebration ever, we went to the parade in Natchitoches Saturday night.  It was much smaller than the Alexandria parade, but it was at night, so fun to see the floats lit up.

Got a few more beads in that parade, so here is a picture of all our Mardi Gras beads in one pile:

Never could find out significance of beads except that they are fun

Tuesday is the last day of celebration, followed by Ash Wednesday, then 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter. 

In case you wonder if Home Depot caters to its customers, this is on display in our local Home Depot:

It's a crawfish table--the garbage can for shells goes under the hole in the middle

Behind the crawfish table is a bucket of either wood or metal seafood paddles to stir your crawfish or other seafood.  Behind that are either 80-quart or 120-quart seafood boiling pots.  By the way, crawfish season has started.

We were in Home Depot to get some things to do some repairs in the elders' apartment.  We also went over to help them clean mold from the showers this week.  I mentioned we are now doing apartment inspections in three apartments, and this one had some pretty scary mold issues.  They hadn't had an inspection for many months, and lots can happen in that time.  Hope it's under control now.  We inspect every six weeks. 

We still enjoy working at the food bank each week.  We visited an early morning seminary in Leesville and an evening home study one in Alexandria this week.  Our Addiction Recovery Program may go on inactive status if no one comes next week.  Programs go on inactive status after four weeks of no attendees.  The person who was coming for five weeks has stopped and that makes us very sad.  For our Marksville visits this week we decided to include the new branch president and his wife.  They actually live in Pineville.  It was really fun to visit with them.  He was a project manager for a few companies, and they lived in 11 states and six foreign countries during his career.  Their home is full of wonderful treasures from all over.  They are both Louisiana natives, he south and she north, so they came back here to retire (in the middle) about six years ago.