Austin Day 3

After insisting that we sleep in, we headed to Lady Bird Lake or "Town Lake" as the locals call it to go paddle boating. Now, the reason we decided on this instead of kayaking is we thought it would be more leisurely-boy were we wrong! Paddle boating is hard work, it's like riding a bike uphill. We definitely got our work out in, even though you wouldn't know it because we never even got out of eyesight of the boat dock! But it was beautiful and surprisingly the water was very clear, which is unusual for everywhere else I have been in Texas.

We even got to see a family of swans.

Then we were starving, which was good because we went to County Line BBQ for lunch, and well judge for yourself if you think Alan received enough protein for the day.

I about fell out of my chair laughing when they brought his plate to him. I think it took him 3 days to finish them!

I had some of the best brisket ever, it was nice and lean, just the way I like it. Sorry, no pictures it was not quite as impressive of a site as the ribs.

We then headed to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Conservation area and wondered around the ground looking at native Texas flowers, it was beautiful.

What an eventful day!

Austin Day 2

We went to Church in the morning and then had lunch at the hotel-let me tell you how good mu husband is, since I was working and he had Friday off, he packed us lunches and dinner so we didn't have to go out to eat! I love him!


After a short nap we went to visit the Zilker Botanical Gardens-which is this amazing free park that you can walk through with all kinds of different gardens. Here are some of our favorite pictures. I put them in a slideshow to the right hoping that it would be easier to view. Enjoy!

Austin Day 1

So we set out for our weekend adventure early Saturday morning, heading for Austin. We decided to break up the drive with a few stops along the way in West this tiny little town south of Dallas that has an amazing Czech bakery. Gotta try a kolache-yumm!

Then on to Waco, for a tour of the Dr Pepper Museum-one of our favorite things about Texas, there is Dr Pepper EVERYWHERE! And we were super excited that they sold caffeine free-yeah! And they still served from teh origianl soda fountain. We also stopped at the Texas Ranger Museum to pick up my dad a Birthday present and found this amazing old cemetery. It had been raining and I thought it was beautiful.


Then on to Austin, state capitol of TX, and home of live music. Once we dropped by the hotel we drove into the city and visited the capitol building and walked along the famous 6th avenue-guess what, it is pretty long. We found a yummy Mexican place to eat in this old restored warehouse and then to our surprise that evening the Congress Avenue strip was filled with fabulous old cars-turns out there was a car show that day-so we found a place to park and walked around taking pictures and enjoying the festivities.

Isn't Austin gorgeous! This is the greenest I have ever seen Texas!

The dome inside was so beautiful, this picture does not do it justice!

Here's me, 18 weeks pregnant.

The many shapes, sizes and colors of cars!

Alan wanted to take this one home!

Gotta love a Texas Hot Rod, I saw one with a lawn mower on top, but did not get a picture.

But let me tell you, I realized something today-I'm pregnant! I sure can't keep the pace I used to-I had to stop every so often to rest. I am sure it didn't help that it ended up being like 85 degrees that day as well! But it was fun. I slept so well!!

Easter Festivities

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter, for me Easter started with General Conference this year. Elder Jeffery R Holland's talk was absolutely thought provoking, I have been thinking about it ever since.

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1032-27,00.html

Alan had Friday off so we actually went out on a date. We went to Fireside Pies, which was fantastic. The food was so good!

And then on Satureday we colored our eggs, I was sad because our ingenious trick from last year of tie dying with rubber bands would not work this year-they kept flying off. But Alan was ever created and painted his eggs...can you tell which ones?

Nana came to join us for church and dinner which was so nice. Only problem was that we were trying to be so good this Easter and not eat a lot of sweets and what does she do? Bring us two huge chocolate bunnies!! Which is sad because that is the one thing being pregnant that makes me sick to eat-weird I know!

Alan had to work that evening so he headed out after dinner and I went to our friends house for an ever exciting Easter Egg hunt with 3 2-3 year old girls, it was quite entertaining. My especial favorite was when they started putting their eggs in other girls baskets or taking eggs out that they wanted! I wonder if their parents ever got them sleep that night...they consumed SO much sugar!

Baby Care Advice

Hey, this is Alan. I know I said a long time ago that you would be hearing a lot more from me on this blog.....well, I guess I lied. Sorrry. Getting things ready for graduate school took a lot of time. Thankfully I have a great wife who manages to keep up with this thing, even though she gets as busy as I do with her job. Youre awsome babe. I love you.

So now that we are having a baby, we have been trying to prepare ourselves to be parents - reading books, talking to the doctor, getting advice from friends, etc. Anything that will help us be more prepared for when our little Rufus arrives. Well a couple of months ago, my friend Ashleigh showed me an instruction manual on basic care for a baby that she thought would be very helpful for me. And I thought that it was very instructional. But being a new dad and all, I'm still not quite sure if the advice it gives is actually correct or something that I should follow. So I have decided to post parts of this manual and get the opinions from the people I trust the most: our friends and family. So go ahead and take a look. Here are some pages of it:

So, what do you think-- good advice, bad advice? Let us know. (Thanks to Ashleigh for sharing the information, and thanks to my friends Olivia and Richard who shared in the laughs and forwarded it to me so I could have it.)