Texas trip!

Since we have free flights this year, we wanted to take one last family trip before baby comes, and we decided to go to Texas since we had never been there and it sounded fun and different.  So we went to Craig and Devaun's from February 6th-10th. We got to Austin on a Saturday and went right to a really cool park for a delicious picnic lunch made by Craig and Devaun.  We walked around and looked at the natural springs that you can pay to swim in.  We thought people were CRAZY for swimming in that thing because it looked so cold, but when we walked down and felt the water ourselves, we realized how warm it actually was!  We then let the kids play on the huge, fun playground there.  Afterwards, we went and got ice cream at Amy's ice cream, which was so good.  After that, we went to the capitol and gave ourselves our own tour.  Next, we went by the University of Texas football stadium (Devaun's future place of higher education) to check that out for a few minutes.  Then we drove towards their home in Killeen and stopped in Round Rock to eat at a really good burger place called Hopdoddy Burger.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church with them and then came home for naps and relaxing.  It was Super Bowl Sunday and Craig and Devaun had a ton of good food planned for us.  The girls loved making homemade pizza with them, and we had a million other good things to eat, too.  We played outside in their yard a little bit and enjoyed the sun for a bit!

Monday, Devaun had to work, but Craig took the rest of us to San Antonio to go take a boat tour of the Riverwalk and to see the Alamo.  Both were really interesting and fun.  The funniest thing happened though, when we were pulling into the parking garage.  Craig joked around about how it was on fire because of some dark smoke coming from the top.  Well, a minute later as we ate lunch in Craig's car in the parking garage, a fire truck pulls up outside right in front of us.  The next thing we know, bunches of people are gathering across the street from us and taking pictures with the phones.  Then employees all start leaving and we are just sitting there laughing and wondering what to do because we didn't hear any sirens or warnings.  Just then a golf cart filled with firemen drive right by us heading up to the top.  We got out of the car and realized the ground was wet and when we opened the door to the stairs in the parking garage, there was like a waterfall coming down from all the water the firemen were using.  So there really was a fire!  A policeman saw us get out of the car and told us we couldn't walk out to the street and that we had to go through the mall and out the other way.  As we were talking, the elevator doors randomly opened and it was packed with about 7 firefighters in it who just stared at us and didn't move, but let the doors close and kept going up.  So we went in the mall which had an alarm going off and it was filled with smoke, and as we were going down the escalator we had to stop for a second because a handful more of firemen were coming up past us.  Everything turned out okay, but all of these isolated events were pretty humorous to us.  We spent several hours between the Alamo and the Riverwalk, and they just started letting people out of the parking garage as we were done.  Good timing!  We drove home and stopped to eat Rudy's BBQ on the way back, which we all loved, but it was especially funny to see the amount of ribs our girls could throw down!

Tuesday, we hung out around Killeen and went to say hi to Craig at his office and check that out.  We couldn't stay long because he was busy finishing up a wisdom tooth pull, but it was fun to see where he is at everyday.  We met up with him at In-N-Out for lunch and then went back to Craig and Devaun's for naps.  After naps, we took the girls over to a park right by their house and stayed there for a while to play until Craig got home.  We ended the night by going to eat dinner at Dead Fish Grill, which was located on a beautiful lake with really pretty views.  Ryan and Craig ordered frog legs for an appetizer and Lucy got brave and tried it herself!

That pretty much concludes our trip because we flew out of Austin the next morning!  It was so fun to see a new place.  Texas was just how I pictured it!!

At Zilker Park, which was incredibly huge.  We couldn't even see the whole thing!

 Barton Springs, which is in Zilker Park.  This would be fun to swim in in the summer, but we heard it gets pretty crowded!

Amy's Ice Cream

 Downtown Austin.  We tried to rent some awesome swan paddle boats here, but the last one had just been rented out and it was way too windy to do them very well that day.

 The State Capitol.

At Hopdoddy's Burgers.  This place was crazy crowded!  We had to wait like an hour just to get inside the building.  It was worth it though- so good and pretty unique and trendy.  Awesome burgers, fries, and shakes.  Lucy took this picture of Ryan and Craig while waiting for our food.

 Craig and Devaun spoiled the girls with these gifts, and Lucy and Claire were over the moon about them.  Candy, notebooks, bubbles, lipgloss, etc.!

Lucy and Claire thought it was so fun to make pizza with them!

 On the Riverwalk boat tour.  This was pretty fun and relaxing too.  The weather was great for it too!

 This was the beautiful view from the restaurant we ate at the last night.  We got there right as it was getting dark, so we didn't get to see it for very long, but it was so pretty!