Birthday Party Southern Style

Yesterday we went to the cutest birthday party for one of our favorite little girls. She's in our playgroup and all the kids just love playing with her. She's a little shy and can be quiet, but get her going and she can almost keep up with the Chaos Kids.

The theme was alligator, the colors were pink and green, and the food.....

Crawfish!

Living in Louisiana for a year and a half now, I've seen plenty of people at festivals and restaurants eating off plates piled high with these little mudbugs, but I had not yet tried them. Until yesterday.

Louisa and Drew put a handful on their plates, along with a few alligator shaped peanut butter sandwiches. They have tried crawfish before, and didn't mind them. Hunter was excited about putting crawfish on his plate, but lost interest when he saw how much work it was to get just a little meat out of the tail. And frankly, so did I! But I ate my fair share. I ate all that was on my plate, Drew's plate, and some extras that a friend piled on me. They tasted like shrimp. Spicy shrimp.

You snap the tail off to get just a little meat out, so it's a lot of work and I knew I was never going to get full on them. But, it was a fun experience. It was neat to sit with southern families and share in their tradition. (Although I was NOT about to suck the claws or the head like true Cajuns do!) The family of the birthday girl admits this was the first crawfish boil they've hosted, but being from the south they are not new to eating it!

After getting our fill of crawfish, and playing on the playground, it was cake time. And what's a southern style, alligator themed birthday without the alligator king cake? A king cake is a mardi gras tradition. It's usually filled with cream and/or fruit. And this has to be one of the cutest alligators I've ever seen. His name was Gaston. I say "was" because of course Gaston is no more!

We had a birthday party last weekend, a birthay party this weekend, and a huge family fun day with our playgroup next weekend. All at the same lake, appropriately named Alligator Lake, all with the same friends, and all at the same picnic spot. An interesting coincidence.