Crazy Night in Austin

View from our backyard. I really don’t like those clouds…

Oh look, they’re rising.

Clouds continuing to slowly rise up from the groud. Hmm… not really a good feeling….

It was coming together so slowly I wasn’t really sure of what I was seeing… but um, yeah, that was the tornado forming. It was moving SE and right down the 1431 highway toward Round Rock… A couple minutes later is right when & where there were reports of a tornado! (when it had moved down the road a couple miles.) OMG!

Um, maybe we should go take cover.

Moody December Sky

Austin is so cold!

How cold was it!?  As cold as I am lame?! 

Colder.

So cold that the outside dog water froze!

 

All of you Arizonan’s will understand why this is so amazing.  Everybody else – don’t laugh at our amazement with ice.

Austin White Christmas

We heard the wind howling all throughout the night last night and when we woke up it felt like it ws 27 degrees outside!  It was freezing!  There was a dusting of white on the cars and houses all around us.  dt drove Jr into school and when we stepped out back to let the dog out we discovered this!

We’re so new to all this weather that we’re not sure if this is snow or ice! It looks like snow, but feels like ice. But wait, would that be sleet?! I’ll just call it “frozen water”. That covers everything, right?  

We were so bummed that Jr had no idea and didn’t see if before he left, so we put some in the freezer.  That way he can still play with it in case the outdoors have melted by the time he gets home.

 Kind of a fun way to start the day!

More Past Pictures

We just got our new camera delivered yesterday!  But we’re still figuring the thing out… so I thought I’d give you a look of some past pictures.  Never before seen on the internet!  Here are some of dt and me on our Anniversary.  We went to a cute chocolate and wine bar at The Domain.  We had lunch and then champagne and yummy chocolates.  Mmmm.  Now we’re talkin’!

First Halloween

This is Baby Bear’s first Halloween outside the womb.  We went with this cute Bat number from Old Navy in honor of our first year here in Austin.  

What, you’ve never heard about the bats here?  Read up on your Austin Facts!

Best Bat Season

Hockey Teams

Festivals – Batfest

Video

EDM: Landmark

Texans are serious about their BBQ, and Austin loves Rudy’s.  

I can’t drop everything and sketch the place with 2 kids in the car so I decided to do take out after picking dt up from work.  Number one lesson in parenting:  Bcome flexible.  If you don’t, your kids will force you to become flexible anyway.  

Here is their lovely cup:

 

 

And some pictures while we were there…

The front:

Apparently Thursday at 5:00 isn’t a busy time for Rudy’s.  We walked past the gas station out front and then past the aisles of convenience store candy/chips and then made it to the fold-out chairs and picnic tables.   That’s when Jr said, “Wow!  This place is fancy!”  Hmm… maybe we need to take him out a little bit more…

They have an automatic handwasher that tickles as it sprays water and soap.  Next time we may skip the BBQ and just get a good handwashing.

Real People Eat Meat out on the patio

After dealing with one too many crazy people and promising myself never to work in customer service again – I just had to take a picture.  :)  I would’ve made a fortune!

You can’t see anything about Rudy’s in this picture, but here’s Baby Bear.  Isn’t he the cutest, sweetest little baby ever!?  He just makes my heart melt. 

Saturday in Austin

 

Today was a full day filled with lots of fun activities.  We first started out at the Austin Zoo.  It was a small zoo with lots of big cats.  We had read that it wasn’t that big of a zoo and so we weren’t disappointed when we arrived.  It just seemed like an old, quiet zoo – which was fine with us!  Afterwards we headed downtown and went to Chuy’s (different from Phoenix Chuy’s) for some takeout .  Then took it down to Zilker Park for a spontaneous picnic and walk around the hike and bike trail.

 

Here are some of the pictures of the day:

Getting Ready to Head out - 

also, time to get Collin’s Ear

 

Dazed & Confused - 

(but without the drugs)

Daddy Driver - 

dt getting ready to venture into the unknown territory of the Austin Zoo.

I’m a Galapagos- 

I am a G-A-L-A-P-A-G-a-lumpagos.

 

Continuing on in the Small, Quiet Zoo - Baby Bear still looking spacey, me being a dork and Jr looking like quite the adventurer!

 

Tigers

 

The Tortoise and The Kid 

Farm Animals - 

Baby Bear wasn’t too interested in the farm animals. He was too busy “thumbing” his stroller.

Family Photo - 

The first picture with all of us in a long time!

 

First Train Ride - This was Baby Bear’s first train ride! We had to celebrate with a photo! He loved it! (as long as he was with mommy because of the noises) Such a little sweetie!

 

Rock - While we waited at Chuy's we played some rock....

Paper

 

Scissors

Down by the River - 

Here’s dt scarfing down a late lunch while Baby Bear entertained us by playing the spoons.

Run - 

dt takes a moment to pause while Jr sees his chance and takes off!

 

Zilker Park Trail - 

Zilker Park is awesome! The wildlife has tons of squirrels, birds, swans, ducks, fish. It also has giant trees and lots of shade and interesting people. While we were driving away we saw an old guy on his bike wearing a thong. That’s it. A thong. *shudder*

 

Parisian Spider - 

One little Zilker Park spider misses home… Je suis fatigué et manquant à la maison. La petite araignée pauvre. 

Bridge - 

A bridge at Zilker Park. I don’t know if there’s another pedestrian bridge at the park or not. I was bummed because I wanted to take more pictures, but alas, the batteries were low. Next time.

 

What a fun day!

Austin Wildlife

After growing up in Arizona, one of the things we are enjoying most here in Texas is the different wildlife.  

Let’s start out with the first new animal I saw and perhaps the only one I didn’t enjoy seeing. We found him on the rest stop bathroom entrance. I’ll post him small… I can’t bare to see it any bigger than that.  *shiver*  CREEPS me out.

Next we saw some deer at the soccer fields at dt’s work.  Every day we pick him up we have to drive by and see if they’re out on the field.   We’ve even seen them leap into the air when they spotted us!

Many times we’ll see the fawns over by the baseball diamond.  They’re smart and are placing the babies where they’ll be protected. Awww, such good little mommies. Here is a mom and her baby:

(Kevin, you may want to turn away for a moment…)

You may remember the gecko we found that I posted awhile back.  No AZ brown bumpy lizards here!  Mostly we see these types of geckos.  A lot of them are bright green too.  They mostly come out at night and take care of all the bugs on our back patio.

(You can look back now, Kevin.)

There is, of course, the sweet little birdie on our back patio, too.  It’s not there every night, but we still see it occationally.  Also, most mornings there are a couple of blue birds screeching their hideous song in our front yard trees.  (Not all birds sing beautifully, apparently.)  But there was a song bird we heard the other day singing away.  It was awesome!  

A couple of weekends ago, we found a snake in our yard!  We were looking at a gecko and all of a sudden Jr shouted, “SNAKE!” (I think the snake was scoping out the gecko, too.)  At first I thought he had to be mistaken… but lo and behold, there it was. 

Here he is peering up at us with his wee beady eyes!

I don’t mind the snake and will take that over the taranchula any day!  We think he may live in the bush out in the backyard… since that’s where he slithered off to hide. (duh)

Yesterday, while we drove by they field to check for deer and we were pleasantly surprised with armadillo!  We were so excited to see real, live armadillo.  Usually we see real, dead armadillo by the side of the road. So this was such an awesome sight to see our first bunch slowly grazing around. They are so cute and reminded us of little bunnies with the way they move.  I think I’ll name this one Hank.

I just love it!  All of these new little creatures to check out and enjoy! We also see lots of butterflies, dragonflies and our neighbor has a frog living in his front yard.  So cute!

Most mornings when I do my daily singing and spinning outside by the creek they all gather around and sing along.  What a great way to start the day – Texas is glorious!!!

What, that doesn’t happen to you?

Pecan Festival

Last weekend we went to the Old Pecan Street Festival.  It was really fun for the first 30 minutes!  The weather was great except for the humidity and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves while we were in the shade.

Jr loved the little inflatable section while mom, dad and baby bear watched while sweating to death in a air-flow free vortex of stale air.

 

Jr enjoyed his turkey leg…

 

….and Baby Bear enjoyed the ambience.

 

After an hour and a half of painful fun, we headed back to the car.  I love this picture because it shows the old brick building in the back with a ”Rock and Roll” sign, the henna booth and tree providing shade with typical Austinites walking around seemingly unaware of HOW FREAKING HUMID AND UNCOMFORTABLE THE DAYS IS.  It was fun to be out and feel a part of the city that’s apparently filled with cybertrons who don’t process bodily discomfort.

We made it back sweat-drenched to the air-conditioned car and was obviously upset to take so long to leave.

After overheating at the festival, we stopped by the ice cream of the gods, Coldstone Creamery.  What a great day after that devine icy cold treat!

 

We’ll have to go again next year depending largely on the UV index, wind, humidity, pressure, dew point and visibility projections on weather.com.