Emily's Birthday

Before the birthday pictures, here are a few of the Bonnet Carre Spillway. As you recall, in early June the Mississippi River was flooding badly. One of the protections for New Orleans is to open the spillway to divert water from the river into Lake Pontchartrain.

Here is a picture of the spillway control structure. It is over a mile long, as I remember.

As per the board above, the water flow rate is 251,000 cubic feet per second!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnet_Carr%C3%A9_Spillway

There were a few locals out fishing. These guys were seining for river shrimp. They didn't seem too impressed by their haul - neither was I.

The spillway is a pretty simple structure. The are no moving gates - just these movable timbers. A small crane is used to lift the timbers from their closed position (foreground). They are hung by a short piece of chain on the left in and placed on a horizontal support on the right end.

If you want to know more click here.
Corps of Engineer's Site

Be sure to click on the video. That must be vintage footage - the slide rule is appropriate for the time the spillway was designed.
Spillway History Video

In nearby Destrehan there is an old Catholic church and cemetery. The first chapel on the site was erected in 1722. The cemetery is just about as old.

I'm not sure how the history of the area worked exactly. Many of the settlers were immigrants from Germany. Some of whom were given French names on arrival. Labranche is a good example, at least some of the Labranches had the original family name of Zweig which means "a branch" in French.

Ci Git means "here lies"

Times change, here is a newer tombstone for a newer immigrant.

OK, finally the Emily pictures. She really likes garden hoses.

Here are a few of the party guests. Sue and Bob combined a trip to New Orleans with the birthday party.

Here is Emily with Ellen. Ellen is Emily's nanny. She does a wonderful job with her.

Here are Lauren and Emily with one of her toys. Emily wasn't exactly sure about the gift unwrapping procedure. Fortunately she had an older friend to help her.

Here are Diane, Angie and Rachel.

Mom and Dad and Emily.

Here are Grandma and Grandpa and their gift. Grandpa spent some time earlier in the day assembling the wagon.

Emily was quite the trooper, although she may have been getting a little tired at this point.

Birthday cake.

Here are a few more portrait type pictures.

I think her average time in the chair for each picture was about 3 seconds. It took three of us to wrangle the baby, take the pictures and keep her looking at the camera.

Another one.

Emily and Jacques have pretty much reached an understanding. He tolerates her toddling around after him and she serves as a frequent source of snacks.