A Day in Austin Patch

Jolee and Jewell had to work on their A Day in Austin patch for Girl Scouts. Since the girls were out for Good Friday we decided to go hang out in Austin. 

The patch had a list of where all we could go so I picked out all new places for us to go. 

We started out at Sandy's Drive in

We had hamburgers. They were pretty good

Jewell and Jolee had grilled cheese

After lunch we headed to the University of Texas campus. I thought that would be an easy thing for us to do. 

Hehe, I love this little picture of her sitting at the fountain all by herself. 

We of course had to take several photos

Storie and Jaina came with us.

It gave Jaina the perfect opportunity to view the campus. She has been talking a lot lately about where she would like to go to college. UT has not been on her top list, but you never know. Her list changes daily. She's got a couple she is interested in, University of Houston, Tarleton University and now Tennessee University in Knoxville. Justin and I do not care where she wants to go, we are not going to hold her back from going anywhere. It's her life and her path, all we can do at this point is guide and support her. In the end she will figure it out and it will be the right choice for her, but for now we are having fun looking at different campuses. So far, she has looked at U of H, UT, SFA, Mary Hardin Baylor, LeTourneau, and Baylor. 

Texas exes

The famous tower

Our goal was to make it to the campus turtle pond because that's where Jewell really wanted to go

Little babies on the rocks

She loved looking at them

There was quite a bit of them in the pond

Jolee looked so cute in her dress.

After the pond we went over to the campus store to look around and get out of the heat.

Then a few pictures by the murals

Our next stop was to Zilker Park. We made our way down there because we were going to ride the train, but it was packed, and I honked at too many people, so we turned around and left

So, we ended up at Half Price Books and Goodwill

And then over to the Hmart

We were looking for peach ice cream but no such luck, but they had some cool claw machines and Jewell got a really cool pop it 

Our last stop was to Chili's for a not so good dinner and then a Wendy's Frosti before going home. 
It was a great trip

Galveston Oh Galveston!

Justin and I headed to Galveston a few weekends ago to celebrate his birthday early and have just a very quick getaway. We drove down to Houston and dropped the girls off at Mimi's house. Then Saturday morning we got up and headed into Galveston.

Our first stop was to get some lunch at the Gumbo Bar. 

The gumbo was not that great. I have had some really good Cajun gumbo in my life, but this one did not hi. The roux was super dark and to heavy which killed the whole dish for me. 

We also had some Cajun stuffed pasties, and they weren't all that great either. So needless to say, our lunch was a fail. Lol

Our next stop while waiting on our hotel to open was a stop at Murdochs. 

We grabbed beers and headed outside to sit and listen to the ocean.

It was such a nice day and the weather was perfect.

One of the cool things we saw was 1877 Elissa sailing around and showing off her sails.

It was so cool an actual wooden boat that old sail around.

The only take out the boat for 2 weeks out of the entire year to show her off. You can even buy (expensive) tickets to ride her. Then we stopped by the Galvez to see Jennifer at work. She gave us a tour of the hotel and its beautiful.

Nexxt up want checking into our B&B. We stayed at the 1890 Freeman House

It was so beautiful!

We relaxed, took a nap and then got ready for dinner

But first we had to stop at La Kings for some chocolate :)

We finally made it to no other then Gaidos

Our meals were awesome as usual. We love Gaidos!

After dinner we headed back to the room. The next morning, we headed to brunch and then to pick up the girls to head all the way back to Salado. 
Even though our trip was short, we had the best time. We always enjoy each other's company and laugh a lot when we are together with no other distraction but back to reality. 

He had a great birthday weekend. 

 

Happy 43

I want to give a big shout out to this guy because it's his birthday today! 

Happy 43rd birthday! We love you!

A few weekends ago, we went and celebrated Justin's birthday in Galveston which I'll blog about tomorrow. 
And then we had a small celebration at the house with the girls. 

Jewell was SO excited to celebrate his birthday. She has been talking about it since spring break. She has kept his gift in her room for months. 

While she was at Mimi's house she made him some shaker bottles out of empty water bottles and some rocks. She said it's for when he gets really mad he can shake his bottles really hard, haha!

Of course he loved it!

She also gave him a new bottle opener

Jaina gave him a grounding mat

And Jolee gave him a meat thermometer 

Jolee also gave him two paintings and all the girls signed and wrote him a sweet card.

We had dinner and then ate cake and ice cream.