Showers in Shreveport

Lilia has met about half of her southern family, eaten her way through lots of barbecue and enjoyed both rain and shine. She is in love with her older cousin Jacob, and her baby cousin James is quite taken with her. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins are all pretty smitten too.

The weather forecast led me astray when it said 70’s and sunshine all week. That’s what we had for our first day but it rained all day today, and hard. Apparently that’s what we have to look forward to tomorrow too. Sadly I didn’t pack for inclement weather so we just had to run back and forth between the car all day and found Sci-Port, a really fun Children’s Science Museum, in downtown Shreveport that kept us both occupied and dry.

We had big family dinners at Aunt Debbie’s house the last two days. Sunday was so much fun and so delicious, we just decided to do it all over again today, thanks in large part to a butternut squash. I went to the store our first morning here to get some things for Lilia like milk, cheese, fresh fruit and veggies. One thing I came back with was a butternut squash and just about everyone who laid eyes on it said what in the world is that, and what are you going to do with it? No joke everyone came back for dinner tonight to see what I could do with that darn squash. No pressure. I tossed cubes of the squash with red potatoes, red onions, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted it all in the oven and they just loved it. They told me afterward, we were skeptical because we don’t like [fill in any of the vegetables listed above] but gee that was good. Score one for vegetables!