So, I disappeared. We took a last minute long weekend trip to New Orleans to celebrate my husbands birthday - and had such a wonderful time, as always one does in New Orleans. I always have the best of blogging intentions when I go on vacation, but I faltered as I often do when I get to go somewhere! New Orleans is my favorite city, it is so beautiful and so historical and has such a different vibe than anywhere I have ever been.

It was fascinating hearing the hurricane stories - everyone called it “The Storm” and are still talking about it like it was yesterday. We are about to hit the 2 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in August, and I was really somewhat shocked to see the neighborhoods still with the X’s and body counts painted on them and the gutted homes that looked like they weren’t anywhere near rebuilding. And the number of camper cities. My heart is with all of those people, everyone there has a story - they always have, but now so many of the stories are similar. I wish I knew what I could do to help - I hope my patronage of the city helped in some way. The Essence Music Festival was going on this past weekend, after being held in Houston the year before because of the storm damage. While we didn’t attend any of the festival shows, the bands were jamming on and around Bourbon Street and we got plenty of awesome music there. The people were absolutely out in full force - an amazing crowd of people. I definitely got the feeling that this was a banner weekend for New Orleans, and that the people were so happy to have some of the liveliness (not to mention livelihood) back to their city. We were so happy to be a part of it.