Mardi Gras in Slidell

Margot and I are down in Slidell visiting with Emily and Mike and Lauren. Not only is Emily walking at nine months she is also really into computers.

Very precocious.

Good thing that rain kept us from attending the Slidell Krewe of Selene parade last night. Margot needed a couple more hours to finish Emily's Mardi Gras hat.

Emily is starting out small on her Mardi Gras career. If you were expecting wild and crazy pictures from New Orleans you will be very disappointed.

Her first parade is the Diamondhead parade.

She had a little nap on the way over so it took a few minutes to warm to the festivities.

We met Ryan and Keri and their son Bailey in Diamondhead. They had arrived early and staked out a spot on Diamondhead Drive.

Lauren and Keri.

Here are the king and queen of the Krewe and their court.

A bunch of clowns on a pretty neat truck.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of Mardi Gras parades let me give you a quick primer. You dress up your vehicle in some outlandish scheme, wear some sort of costume, drink beer, and throw trinkets to the crowd.

You may be asking why about now.

There is no really good answer for that.

I guess it is just another manifestation of the whole Mardi Gras concept of a big blowout before Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Mardi Gras parades run the gamut from the huge New Orleans parades like Bacchus and Endymion to the theme parades like Barkus to community parades like this one.

The basic idea is to wave to the people on the floats and get them to throw you beads.

I helps if you are a cute little baby.

Three year old boys do pretty well, also.

Sometimes you wonder about the judgement of some of the costume decisions.

By the way, those are incoming beads thrown in my direction.

You wonder if everyone buys into the costume decisions. I guess that is what the mask is for.

Face paint works as well.

I got nothin' for this one.

Did I mention that Diamondhead is mostly a retirement community?

Cute children collect a lot of swag. Emily will be in her prime until she is about 6 or 7.

Beads in flight.

A family affair.

A close up.

Another family float. Usually these floats will do a number of parades over the 2 weeks or so of carnival season.

They spent some time and money on this float.

Some of those beads on Lauren were thrown to Emily. The ability to attract beads seems to peak at about 25 for women. Lauren still does ok.

I would NEVER call those beads on Margot sympathy beads.

Finally, here is Emily with some of her beads and stuff.