Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez! Day 1

On November 13, 2008, I went with four other moms from my Mothers of Multiples group to New Orleans. (Since we all have different initials, I am going to refer to the other moms as S, M, C, and D.) We had a great time! We left Thursday morning and spent the day driving. We took our time, stopping for a bathroom break, stopping to eat, stopping for a bathroom break, stopping for a bathroom break...let me just say, we were all mothers who had delivered twins plus a singleton. You moms out there know what just one delivery can do to a bladder!!

It was dark by the time we got close to New Orleans, and I was driving. We decided to stop at a grocery store for a few things like cereal, milk for coffee, a couple of bottles of wine, OJ and some champagne for mimosas. We had also brought along some snack items, so we were pretty set for what little time we would be spending in the room.

We had a GPS helping us, but it kind of turned us around a little bit once we got close to our destination. Not badly; we found it pretty quickly. But we did start calling her "Special K" due to her somewhat backwards directions, at least they seemed that way to some in the group. Sorry, "Special K" isn't very PC, is it?

M's parents have a condo in New Orleans, and they were generous enough to let us use it. That really helped on the budget! We had a living room area with a queen sleeper-sofa, two bedrooms with queen-sized beds, a bathroom, and a small kitchen area with a mini-fridge, microwave and stove. We only used the fridge and coffee pot. We weren't there to cook! Ha!

After getting our bags in and settling in a bit, we ordered in some food and decided to stay in the condo that evening. It was, after all, getting late, and we were tired from driving all day. The food that night was okay, but nothing any better than what we could get here at home. Not very promising at the time, but turned out not to be an issue!

We spent the evening eating, talking and laughing. We also watched the movie, "About Polly," which I had never seen before, but first we had technical difficulties. The remote wouldn't work the DVD player, so we called down to the front desk. The very nice desk guy came up and worked on it with us. First he pointed out we were using the wrong remote, but that didn't fix the problem. He and C finally determined the DVD player wasn't hooked up correctly, and unhooked it and hooked it back up properly. 

The movie was very funny, but funnier still was watching S laugh herself to tears. We finally all went to bed around 1:30, I think. C decided to sleep on the sofa bed, since she felt like she would be the earliest riser. She was right, incidentally, but I usually wasn't far behind, even though I didn't always get up right away. S and D shared a room, and M and I shared the other room. I woke around 4 am, probably due to some noise. I always have trouble going back to sleep, so I was still awake at 4:30 when M started stirring, saying she didn't feel well. Poor thing spent the next hour and a half throwing up and not feeling well, and sleeping very fitfully on and off. I felt bad for her, and wished I could make it better! Come to think of it, the last time I was in New Orleans, my roommate spent the night throwing up, but for different reasons. Must be the city!

So, that is the first day of our retreat, mostly spent in travel but, still, a lot of fun with good friends. Lots of laughter and talk, and getting to know each other better. I will get to day 2 soon, hopefully!

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