New Orleans

Last night we all returned from an almost week-long trip New Orleans, or as they say down there, “Naw’lins“. Lynne and myself were there to attend the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). The town and conference center were extremely busy, with two conferences running simultaneously, 10,000 participants at our conference and an additional 10,000 at SC10, a conference on super computing.

Brooke came with us to watch the kids during the day and generally speaking it all went well, although it could have been smoother. First, travelling with three kids as young as ours is not trivial and we didn’t have direct flights. Secondly, many of us were sick. Lynne and I are still recovering from last weeks illness, Connor is in the middle of it, as was Brooke who was running a fever for a few days and had a very painful throat all week. She visited her doctor this morning and confirmed a double ear infection with strep throat, how’s that on top of watching three small kids in a hotel room? Finally, since Connor has a cold, he was not sleeping well at all and when in a single hotel room, (Brooke had her own room), everybody knew when he was awake which was often. Lynne bore the brunt of that!!

The girls did have fun though I think. They were generally well behaved and had fun and cycled from the swimming pool, to eating out in restaurants and watching movies and cartoons, all of which are restricted at home. They also had a chance to visit the New Orleans Aquarium and Children’s Museum on separate days with Brooke. They were both enamored with this white albino alligator that they saw at the aquarium. A side note, Anja lost her second tooth in transit!

We owe a huge thanks to Brooke, without whose help as normal, we simply could not have made this trip happen. Thank You!!