New Orleans Fun! (Mostly Pictures)

In between the December madness (and by madness, I mean my to do list that has scrambled my anxiety into a tangled ball of thread), I'm posting some New Orleans pictures! I didn't want to wait to do this until January, so here I am. To make this quicker, I will attempt to be a writer of few words (this is so, so hard - lol).

My family and I went down to New Orleans in October to enjoy all the Halloween fun. This was my fifth time in New Orleans, hubbie's second, and my kids' first. We all had a blast!

The main event we went down for was the Krewe of Boo Halloween parade. Here's some of the awesome floats. Quite frankly, I'm shocked both of my kids could move with all the beads around their neck once the parade finished up. Don't ask how we fit it all in our suitcases flying home!

That last picture up there is of the plastic coins they threw. What an awesome souvenir! We also went to Boo At the Zoo - the first picture below shows the pool died red. Oh, no, the elephants are bathing in blood! XD The other fountain you see is just outside the Botanical Gardens in City Park.

I loved some of the Halloween decorations in the French Quarter. So fun!

Finally, I leave you with tons of pictures of yummy food. We went to so many great restaurants. And yes, even my kids enjoyed the local cuisine!

1001 Reasons Not To Clean - #21 through #25

Welcome to 1001 Reasons Not to Clean! The main goal of this series is to see if I can actually reach 1001 reasons, 5 reasons at a time (the final post, if I get there, will be 6 reasons). I'm sure I can. It's not just my crazy brain being unrealistic, right? Links to previous posts are below. And feel free to share your excuses, and they might get added to my list (with credit, of course)!

#1 through #5 ~ #6 through #10 ~ #11 through #15 ~ #16 through #20

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21. Because it's summer, and not only is Preschooler home as usual, so is Eldest. Even if you convince them to play together most of the day, you find that the day has come and gone with nothing done aside from dealing with their antics. Who has time for cleaning?

22. Because it's summer, and that means you're trying to do tons of "fun stuff" with the kids. As in, outside-of-the-house fun (some that makes you wonder how it got so expensive). Even if you have a day in, you're so exhausted from all of the "fun stuff" that it's hard to think let alone clean.

23. Because it's summer, and you have no air conditioning, which makes it too damned hot to clean.

24. Because it's summer, and you'd rather enjoy the nice weather by going for a walk with your family (and maybe playing a little Pokemon Go).

25. Because summer is coming to an end, and Everquest is having a Double EXP (experience) Weekend for Labor Day. This is not only a great reason not to clean, but it also turns out to be a reason to delay your trip to the zoo until the following weekend.

Bristol Renaissance Faire 2017

I try to attend the Bristol Renaissance Faire every year. Currently it's been with my family, of course (though hubbie and I are threatening to leave the kids with a friend one day next year so we can have a non-kid centric day there - lol). And this year I wanted to share some pictures I took. I think I got some good ones!

This is the statue of a jester. Don't ask me to report the details on the plaque below it because the day goes fast and my memory doesn't retain such things.

We attended the Joust to the Death. I had fun taking tons of pictures of this. Some are to the right and below.

Finally, here's yet another rare picture of me. I mean, I just had to get a picture on the unicorn throne (actually alicorn for those who are picky with that kind of thing)!

No No No No No No No No - LEGO Batman!

The LEGO Batman Movie! I saw it, and my comments on it are below. Be forewarned, there are spoilers. So many spoilers. If you haven't seen it yet and don't want to hear about all of the awesome pop culture references, then go watch it and come back and read this post. You really should go see it. And don't tell me you'd rather see 50 Shades Darker instead (for shame).

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The LEGO Batman Movie Poster

LEGO Batman was AWESOME!

OK, yes silly reference to the first LEGO movie, but it comes with the territory. And I actually think The LEGO Batman Movie was better than The LEGO Movie.

First, the song in the opening seen -- best Batman song ever! "Who's the Bat(Man)." It's on my list to buy. ;)

Onto the serious stuff? Nah, not yet. But I have to say, I really did enjoy this movie. And not just because the toddler sat through it entranced instead of making a scene in the theater. I was literally laughing out loud through most of the movie, and for me that's great. Everyone needs to laugh. It's good for the soul. Honestly, it was nice to see the Batman/DC franchise poking fun at itself, among other things.

Let's see, some of my fav lines... Barbara Gordon: "Batgirl? Can I call you Batboy?" Oh, and when Sauron tells Joker the Bat Cave is under Wayne Manor. Joker: "You mean to tell me Bruce Wayne is... Batman's roommate?"

Part of the humor, though, was in the pop culture references. When Joker goes to the Phantom Zone, it's filled with so many bad guys from a lot of other movies and books. Voldemort, The Eye of Sauron, Godzilla, King Kong... but my favorites were the Gremlins and the Daleks! I'm likely dating myself with the Gremlins, but I got all giddy when I saw Spike right away in the Phantom Zone. And you have to love the Daleks and their infamous line: "Exterminate!"

There were so many Easter eggs and references in this movie that I'd have to watch it a couple more times to catch most of them -- and I'd probably still miss some (because let's face it, I haven't seen and read everything, so some stuff may have gone over my head). Siri is Batman's computer! Too funny.

With so many references stuffed into this movie, I'm actually a bit overwhelmed and not sure what others to mention!

I'll move on then and get a little more serious. Not too serious. Promise.

Not only does The LEGO Batman Movie have great humor, it actually has a solid story arc and character growth.

Batman has relationship issues. Right from the beginning he doesn't even want to claim Joker as his main villain (and the Joker's face when he's rejected is priceless). This stems from the loss of his parents, and you see him struggle with this throughout the movie and eventually overcome it and start to let people in. Which then ends with him finally admitting to Joker that he's his main villain. Great arc and a funny one at that. Not the normal "love" story which we see so often in most Batman movies.

Actually having a good story arc and the character growth at the end just strengthened the humor of the movie for me. I was expecting to laugh, but I didn't expect a great story to go along with it! Seriously well done.

Oh, and the last bit I have to mention: Harley Quinn. How can I not? She's one of my fav villains. I loved it that they kept switching up her outfit to reflect the many looks of her character through the years.

If you want a laugh, make sure to watch The LEGO Batman Movie! And if you've seen it already, there's no reason you can't see it again, right?

For The Hippocampi!

Eek! I forgot to blog last week. Sorry about that. I was taking off a week from writing due to a lot of other events going on, but I was still supposed to write up a post! Well, that post will come later this week (I must express my opinion on the series finale of Castle).

For now, I'll give you a glimpse at what distracted me last week. Yup, I was bad. A game did it.

I'm currently taking part in a breeding competition on the Magistream site. My team is in second place! Woo hoo!

We are Team Hippocampi, and we're breeding the Sun Callisto Family. It's fun and crazy times in our team forum. We're all super supportive of each other, and we know that every new egg added to the family helps (and understand if some people can't contribute as many babies as others).

Anyway, Magistream is a creature click site. So, to breed new babies, we have to grow our babies up!

Would you like to help me and my team in this crazy endeavor? If so, please click on the eggs and hatchlings below! (The Snap Links or Linkclump browser add-ons are quite awesome to be able to select more than one link at a time to open them.) The quicker these grow, the more we can breed, and maybe we'll jump into first place!

I will try to update these codes once per day at the least to weed out the adults. Please come and click at least once per day if you can! The competition ends on June 18.

Once the competition is over, I will remove the links and announce what place my team ends up in.

EDIT: We...tied! Lol. It was a crazy race between us and one of the other teams, and we kept going back and forth with who was in the lead. When the proverbial buzzer sounded and the dust settled, the points for our team and the one other team were the same! So, we won, but we just have to share the limelight. Both of our teams got the first place prizes. That was a blast!