More Disney World and New Orleans

FRIDAY- This was our last day to be in the theme parks. Let me tell you how special Friday was. Only on the weekends in June, Hollywood Studios has something called Star Wars weekends. They have the characters througout the park for pictures, A parade with a lot of the characters, and various shows to watch. They also have three celebrities that were actors in the movies come and sign autographs. We skipped the autographs, because even fastpassing the lines was like a three hour wait and we the boys didn't care much about that. What they DID care about was Jedi training. We ran straight to the line for training when the rope was dropped. Bradley was picked for the first show and Jake wasn't. Jake began boohooing. It was sad, and I was prepared to be there for the remaining five shows at that point for Jake to hopefully get picked. They only chose 30 kids a show. That may sound like a lot, but when you saw all the kids waiting and jumping up and down to participate, it really wasn't.
This is the storm troopers putting on a show on the roof before the park opened.

Here is Bradley getting his Jedi training. It was so funny how serious all the kids were. Then the smoke came and the doors slid open to reveal their opponent. Some little kids cried it was so realistic. And here is young padawan Bradley putting his Jedi training to the test against none other than Darth Vader!!!

Luckily the Jedi who chose the kids to go on stage, picked our little guy Jake for the next show. I was relieved. Jake got to battle Darth Maul.

Jake in training
Darth Mauls entrance. My two padawans :)


The boys looooved getting their pictures with the characters. Especially with Anakin. I let them bring their light sabers with them and this lady we were in front of in line happened to have a sharpy on her and she let the boys use it to have Anakin autograph their light sabers. Bradley said I needed to buy a case for his. Randy said Bradley I don't think that was the real Anakin actor and Bradley said no dad it was, didn't you see the scar on his face. Ha! We let him go ahead and believe in the disney magic :) Some pig guy from Star Wars

Chewbacca and Jake
This was during the parade. Again I don't know how, but we got awesome seats for the parade. Many of the characters walked up to the boys and shook their hands. The boys loved it.

Jake and Boba fet. He's a bounty hunter. Believe me I learned a lot about Star Wars this weekend! Bradley looking at Chewbacca's hands.

Friday night we headed back to Magic Kingdom for one last time.
We had dinner reservations at the Crystal Palace with Eyore, Tigger, Piglet, and Pooh Bear at 9:30. We had already seen the fireworks and spectromagic parade Thursday night, but we got to enjoy another view of it from our table window at dinner. Again Awesome. Jake watching the fireworks..... And Jake falling asleep in his dinner chair after the fireworks. Unfortunately he had to miss the Peter Pan ride after dinner. He did go on it, just Randy had to hold him sleeping while on it.

Now. we left Disney World Saturday morning and were feeling pretty good. Sad to leave, but still had some energy. So, I asked Randy if we could spend the night in New Orleans and go on the Katrina tour Sunday morning. So, here are pictures from our 3 hour tour. They took us all through New Orleans. It really was sad to see that 3 year later, people are still struggling and houses/neighborhoods are in bad shape. I really wanted to go on this tour, because when Katrina hit, we lived in east Texas and our hotels were filled to the max and bus loads of people got sent to our churches and kids started going to our schools. The boys went with me to one of the hotels to meet people and deliver gatorade and toys and diapers. So, I wanted them to see this. Below is Six Flags which got wiped out and never reopened.

The door on the side of this house says "You loot, you die" The Superdome
Remeber the images on the news of the prisoners sitting on the over pass? The guards had to swim them there and keep them there until they could open this place below to be a temporary jail.
On the way into New Orleans we had to take a detour through Slidell because of a chemical spill. Slidell didn't look like it was in very good shape either.
The boys hanging out waiting for our food after the tour.
What a typical street looks like...maybe two or three houses on the block have people actually living in them, the rest are empty and torn up.

This is were Harry Conick Jr. came in and had Habitat for Humanity start building houses for the people. There are 47 houses built so far. 300,000 houses were ruined in the flooding. There is a long ways to go in New Orleans. Our tour guide wasn't real fond of the government, or the govenor of Louisiana. He said she delayed George Bush coming in with aide because she didn't want a republican saving the day.
This used to be a neighborhood full of houses in the ninth ward. It's now full of empty lots. I can't imagine what it looked like before they cleared out all the houses.
Just found this interesting. It was here before the flooding.

And, I leave you with Jake's thought on New Orleans....