Our day trip: Aquarium of the Americas, NOLA

Yes, despite the sorry state of our house and the number of home improvement projects begging to be completed, we decided life was too short to worry about the dishes and headed to New Orleans today. We thought about the zoo, but rain threatened, so we headed over to the Aquarium of the Americas.

We expected Will to enjoy it, but Adelaide's might have been the most enthusiastic visitor of all of us. I guess we should have expected it -- Adelaide + water + animals = Luuuuuuuv. Or something like that. She's a naturalist, to be sure, and she was thrilled at the visit. It also alleviated some mommy guilt on my part -- Go Diego Go was mentioned more than once today, and Adelaide even recognized the macaws and remembered their sound!

After the aquarium, we headed to Cafe du Monde...well, okay, not the original. Will was BEAT after traipsing around the exhibits, and while Ben and I were all for walking over to the French Market, neither of us desired to haul a tired 6-year-old on our backs. So we went to the one in Metairie, and WOW was it GOOD. I mean, INCREDIBLE. Will got a hot chocolate, Ben and I shared an iced cafe au lait, and Adelaide chowed down with the rest of us on some steaming hot beignets. We were left with full bellies and powdered sugar blizzards on our clothes...a good deal.

Why am I tearing up?

Are we all Louisiana now? I am so overwhelmed by the Saints' win tonight...okay, I have an admission to make. At the 3:18 mark, when the Saints turned it over, I turned the channel. I hit "Record" on the TiVo first, mind you, but I couldn't bear to watch. I couldn't bear to see it all fall apart. So I watched Candice Olsen redecorate a newborn nursery on Divine Design until I couldn't stand it anymore. I checked ESPN.com, and I saw it. And what was the first thing that popped into my head?

"We won."

We won. I am a Titans fan. My blood runs Tennessee blue from head to toe...or so I thought. In all honestly, if the Saints had been playing the Titans, I would have been cheering for the Titans. But tonight, I was a Saint. Weren't we all? I look at the celebration in the Dome and I remember the whirr of helicopters overhead for a full month after The Storm, knowing that even though it took us a week to get back to the house because we didn't want to suffer a newborn in the stifiling Louisiana August/September weather, that when we got back into our relatively new home and I heard those helicopters, they were still rescuing people off rooftops. I couldn't watch any network TV because it was 24/7 coverage. The suffering in the dome, the water...the water. And I know that it isn't over. New Orleans fate is not sealed. We celebrate tonight, but I wonder how many people will die there this week and what the insufferable politicians will pretend to do about it.

But I know how much this means to the people I see everyday. The people I walk past at Target, the people who suffered through so many hapless seasons (yes, after the last couple of years with my Titans, I have an inkling of understanding, but I can't pretend to know what decades of it feels like), and the people who were suffering on rooftops and in the dome and in the convention center and who were suffering silently, evacuated but knowing all was lost. To them, this gives back a little bit of something that money could never purchase, that you can't buy to replace: The Spirit of New Orleans.

I haven't even looked at it yet, but I can't wait to see Michelle's post on her Saints Rant Blog!!! I am so happy for her and Saints Nation!!!