1st Night in New Orleans-- Tues. Dec 8th

Eowyn did SO well on the flights over; nursing on take-offs and sucking a paci with relish on landings, meaning that her little ears pressurized perfectly, and she was tear-free. Of course she charmed everyone who could see her, but her fan base was a bit limited as she spent the bulk of our journey asleep in her Ergo carrier. I carried her in that while Ryan used the stroller as our luggage trolley. =D

Our first event was a dinner for the conference speakers, of which Ryan was one. For those who were wondering, this little family trip was one which was work-related. Ryan got invited to speak at conference called "Do It With Drupal," which teaches web-developpers how to use the php-based content management system called Drupal... basically it's a system of code that organizes data that enables you to create webpages that then can do cool things, like be a store, or a blog, or a teaching resource, etc. (I probably said that all wrong, but I think I get the jist & maybe you get the general idea. At this conference people kept asking me "what I did with Drupal" and my answer was "I just try to understand what Ryan's talking about." =D) (MTV, Sony artist sites, and the new Whitehouse.gov all run on Drupal). Ryan was teaching sessions on how to implement and modify his e-commerce "module", Ubercart... basically a chunk of code that allows you to sell stuff online. Since we can and won't always be able to, Eowyn & I tagged along. This is great because we get to be WITH Ryan instead of missing him, we get to meet all these work contacts and get to know the Drupal community, AND we get some fun sight-seeing in the mix.

So back to our first night in New Orleans... Tuesday night. We had a really nice dinner just a few blocks from our hotel (on Canal St.), and I got to put faces with names all over the place. Everyone was super-stoked about Eowyn... apparently Ryan had been putting her pictures in his earlier presentations at other Drupal events in San Francisco & Austin, TX. =D

Conked out for the first part of dinner in her stroller. Yep, she's a tummy sleeper through and through.

It was one of the conference organizer's daughter's 10th birthday, and she kindly shared her balloons with Eowyn, who was a BIG fan!

Family pic by the Christmas tree in the lobby.

Me in our bed in our hotel room (we stayed at the Mariott); I said I was cold & Ryan tossed me what he thought was a blanket at the foot of our bed. It was actually just this narrow strip of material-- purely decorative & not at all warm. We were tired & sleepy, so of course this struck us as extra funny... worthy of grabbing the camera & photographing, even! We giggled for a while.