Home. Sweet. Home!

We are back home. what a trip! lots of driving for a short time away.

On Friday, we left home around 1, with the 3 youngest kiddos. We drove to my parents and dropped them off. We made it quick and were on our way. The timing wasn't too great though because it was putting us going through New Orleans at the busiest time!

Instead, we backtracked a bit and went around New Orleans.

We got to our hotel, unpacked and went riding around to see if we could find a place to eat. We passed by Steve's Marina right away, but kept going to see if we would see anything else. We didn't and ended up at Steve's.

We walked in and there were take home menu's on a table by the door. We looked to see if there was anything we wanted and were trying to decide if we were going to stay or not. Several people told us, we couldn't go wrong with ANYTHING on the menu.

This guy came up to us and asked if we were looking for anything inparticular and that if there wasn't what we wanted, to let him know...he would cook it how we wanted. Ok.

Well...he WAS Steve...the chef, AND the owner!

He came to our table and asked what we wanted. He and the waitress suggested some things, and we went with those suggestion.

He changed what i ordered to a healthier version (per my request to have something healthy but TASTY).

Lance ordered half trout/half catfish fried...

I had Red Snapper grilled with crabmeat and shrimp (cooked with onions, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts) on top of the snapper. Oh. MY. GOODNESS. (oh, it was on a pile of whole wheat pasta) that was one of the BEST dinners i have had! (and I have a family of GREAT cooks....so, i'm not all that impressed usually!) Lance and i would go back more often if it weren't a 5 hour drive to go eat! LOL

this is not a pic of my food, but close to it.... my camera is too bulky to carry in my purse, if i had one with me that night... and we were right in the middle of the room...someone make think i was crazy for taking a picture of my plate! LOL

Saturday morning, we got up, took our time getting ready. I heated up the rest of my above meal (i ate half and brought the rest back to the hotel!). Lance ran out to get Chicken Fingers from

Kinda like Raising Cane's with more choices.

After we ate, we took off for the Outlet Mall.

We just casualy walked around. We found some great deals at 'The Children's Place' for the littles. i could have picked hundreds of outfits for them, but couldn't justify paying what they want for them to wear for such a short amount of time!

We went back to our hotel and rested for a while, then got dressed to go out to dinner at a Casino in Biloxi. We went to Beau Rivage. We were seated at one restaraunt, but after no one coming to our table for our drinks, and not really seeing much on the menu that we really wanted, we decided to go to

instead. Lance ordere Pulled pork with Fries, and i had baby back ribs with baked potato.

We went in the casino for a very short amount of time, but enough time to lose money! lol (lance played blackjack and some slots)

We left and went back to the hotel. I snapped a couple of pics on the way....

I'm guessing the hurricane washed this boat up on land and they just left it there. What's left of the bridge that the hurrican destroyed..

We had planned to get cheesecake to go before we left the casino and decided not to.

at about 9:30, i got up and said i was tired of thinking about cheesecake and wanted to go find some! We were going to go back to Steve's but called and they didn't have any that day!

Applebee's was right next door, so we went there.

Lance ordered the plain cheesecake shooter, i ordered the strawberry cheesecake shooter, and we shared a Choc. mouse shooter. (they didn't serve slices of cheesecake)
They were good. i actually thought the choc. mouse was the best, but i LOVE cheesecake and that tasted like something out of a box..... but it hit the spot and i was over my sweet tooth!

Sunday, we got up, packed up and checked out of our hotel. We went back to Steve's since lance wanted to try the poboys Steve raved about making. Lance had a roast beef poboy (which he said was good) and i had a healthy choice of grilled chicken salad.

we left there and headed home. We stopped first to get Trevor (who came back with a black eye),

he said he was going to tell his friends he got into a fight with someone named 'Shalom' LOL...really he had a fight with the 4-wheeler... leaning over the handlebars, hit a bump and smacked his cheek. It was even more blue under his eye this morning.

then at my parents to get the littles. We made great time and avoided to bad weather that was all over the place. We made it home around 5, unpacked the vehicle, went get Travis from his friends and had a lazy evening playing with the kids and watching Extreme Home Makeover.

Today, back to kids, laundry, cooking....