October: Bratz Y'all and Hurricane Zeta

Since our local Octoberfest was cancelled this year (thanks, COVID), I decided we should do the next best thing: finally check out Bratz Y'all. It's been open since 2012, but we had never been. So we ventured down to the Bywater on October 3 for an authentic German dinner.

It's not a very big place at all, but we managed to snag one of the few outside tables. The kids had brats and pretzels, and Kenny and I ordered dinner platters. There was also a phenomenal guy playing guitar while we were there, Johnathan Long. We thoroughly enjoyed listening to him.

Afterwards, we walked across the street to Crescent Park to see the sunset. Such a fun night out, something we hadn't done in a very long time.

Mid-month randomness: fun at Nola's, impromptu get together at Dana's new house (she has a pool!), surprise boiled crab dinner for Kenny from Erin, and early voting in the presidential election.

October 28: Hurricane Zeta became the 5th named storm to target the state of Louisiana in 2020. We did virtual school that morning and tried to stay occupied the rest of the day before the weather got too bad. I made a big pot of chili, and the boys decorated a Halloween gingerbread house.

We lost power around 6pm that evening, which meant we ate our chili dinner by candlelight. We didn't get a lot of rain, but the winds were very intense. We saw a transformer on Williams Blvd blow from our backyard; the sky lit up like rainbow fireworks. Rory was very scared. He does NOT like the dark.

Thank goodness for Kenny bringing a small generator home from work. It was enough to power our refrigerators, the tv, our phones, and my coffee maker. We had to get creative when the sun went down though, especially in the kitchen. Headlamps to the rescue!

The boys and I went on lots of walks around the neighborhood after the storm, mostly to check on a broken power pole a couple of streets away, the reason we were without power for so long. Finally, on Halloween morning (after a breakfast of beignets), we walked down to discover a crew working on the issue. They were all from North Carolina and had not been home for more than 3 days since Hurricane Laura hit at the end of August. So we ran over to Nola’s and grabbed some cookies to show them how appreciative we were for their hard work. Josh promised they would enjoy them when they took a break. Huge thank you to all of the line workers out there that helped to restore power. Y’all are awesome!!!

We definitely weren't the ones without power the longest, but it sure felt like forever sometimes: 65 hours total. It came back on around 11am on Halloween morning. Just in time for us to prepare for a fun Halloween night!