We're Now Free to Travel About the Country!

So, newlyweds often have a lot of time on their hands. I mean, you can only go out to dinner and a movie so many times, right? So the ones who are fortunate enough to have the means use this pre-children period in their marriage to travel. It's a great use of time. You learn about your spouse, you overcome challenges together and you have the energy and freedom to do it!

It just so happened that Mike and I had reasons to go to New Orleans and Vegas on back-to-back weekends. Who does that?! Apparently, we do. We've been known to go from Oklahoma to Louisiana twice in two weeks. We've taken a 10-day trip to cover Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. We know how to travel. It's just now that we choose to fly a bit more often! ;) (We're learning...)

So first up was a retirement ceremony for Mike's boss at Lackland. He is from New Orleans and wanted to celebrate with friends and family there. The ceremony took place in the foyer of the WWII museum. Just that part was awesome, so I can't wait to go back and walk through the museum. (A combination of a reception to follow, 3-inch heels and the end of a sinus infection prohibited an actual tour of the museum.) During our weekend in NOLA we got to watch the LSU Tigers beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, eat a LOT of authentic Cajun food, and take a couple trips up and down Bourbon St.

The next weekend my mom was giving a talk at a conference in Las Vegas and invited Mike and I to join her and my aunts and uncles for the weekend. We had celebrated my aunt's 40th birthday there when I was 18, so we went ahead and celebrated her 50th last weekend even though her birthday was last November. We stayed at New York, New York. Mike learned to play craps and even won some money doing so. We went to see the Amazing Jonathan and Zumanity. I was shocked at how "reasonably priced" the food was. Going into the PBR (bulls, not Pabst) restaurant, I was sure it would be about $15 for a burger you could have gotten at Chili's. It was actually really great food. Mike got Chicken and Waffles (because that's something he would do) and said it was the best chicken he's ever had! I was trying to take it easy and had a turkey sandwich with fruit on the side ($9), which was all fresh and delicious! Kudos to Vegas for having great food and not taking all my money for it!

When we got to the airport to go home on Monday, we noticed that our flight was delayed 2 hours and we were already 2 hours early! We were afraid we'd miss our plane to San Antonio so we rushed to the gate to make changes. They told us that our plane to SAT would be held for us so we wouldn't miss our connection, but they went ahead and put us on a flight leaving right then. When we got to San Diego (where we were changing planes) we realized we had 3 hours. If you've been to that airport, you would likely agree that that doesn't sound fun. So we whipped out the iPhone, Yelped a restaurant on the water less than a mile away and caught a cab. It was fantastic. We had lunch on the harbor in the sun. It was 80 degrees and beautiful. Mike even said that was the best chicken sandwich he's ever had! We even got back to the airport an hour before boarding! What a great trip!!