Our first whole day in New Orleans was Nathaniel’s birthday! And Friday the 13th, which he loves, and we were in New Orleans, which is pretty spooky, so I had high hopes for making it an awesome birthday weekend for him. Not everything I was hoping to make happen came together on the day of his birthday, but that was all right. In the morning, we drove to Gulfport (to Jones Park, which was unfortunately not that cool), where Nat opened his presents from me. It rained from the moment we left the hotel to after we’d driven away from the beach, sigh. Then we drove to Abita Springs to see the UCM Museum/Abita Mystery House. It was really, really neat. We could have stayed there for hours, but we had to head back downtown for more conference events. There was more good stuff the next day :)