NON-RACE-RELATED NOLA ADVENTURES

Poboys for dinner with Katie and Desi on our first night in town:

Alex reading to Desi, James, Manu, and Cora (we all did lots of reading over the weekend, when the kids weren't racing cars up and down the hallway):

James, trying to keep daddy in bed

 James, Will, and Cora at the NOLA Children's Museum:

 Manu and James dancing in front of the color screen at the museum:

 James grabbed a BIG snack on the way back to the car after the museum:

 James, Manu, and Cora playing around in the apartment we rented:

Manu, Cora, and James driving their cars around the coffee table while Jean instructed them with "Red light! Green light!" to keep them from running each other over:

After the race on Sunday, the guys ordered pizza using an iPad (to locate an open, nearby restaurant), a magnetic drawing board (to record everyone's pizza choice), and a little attitude (or maybe a lot of attitude...)

 Cora was absolutely terrible to get to sleep every night (honestly sweetheart, the worst attitude we've ever had from you...), and she barely napped, but when she did she crashed hard (and very late in the afternoon unfortunately, which didn't help our bedtime struggles):

We obviously couldn't visit NOLA without having breakfast at Cafe Du Monde. Us adults drank 2 orders of cafe au laits each, the kids had hot chocolate, and I think we went through 5 orders of beignets. Cora preferred to just eat her sugar with a spoon...

Sorry I didn't take more photos of our trip... we were crazy busy with race prep and race day festivities, and my camera is still on the outs (so these are all from my cell phone). We really did have a great weekend, and it wasn't ALL about racing. Considering we shared an apartment with 8 adults (we had 2 grandmas along for the ride!) and 6 kids aged 7-months to 4-years, I'd say we all fared pretty well. Perhaps not in the sleep department (especially since poor Lauren was sick and kept her mama and daddy up all night, every night), but we had fun and the kids couldn't have been happier to have their buddies around 24/7 for a few days. Of course, my favorite Jamesism from the trip is when we returned to the apartment from the Children's Museum, after having been apart from Manu for MAYBE an hour. Manu ran up to James and said "I've been looking for you!" and James replied with "I'm SO glad to see you!" That pretty much sums it up - a good, long weekend adventure with our good friends. And we couldn't have raced (and trained) without their help, so it was especially nice to be able to share the entire experience with them. Thanks again you guys (and you grandmas!) for making the weekend the best it could be!