Weekend At Harry's

One of the great things about being a stay-at-home mom is the freedom from schedule it allows. In fact, the ability to pack up and go whenever is one of the primary reason I don't go back to work. Ray doesn't travel for work often or for long periods, so when he does it's easy for us to all pack up and make a trip out of it.

The weekend of Truitt's birthday Ray had an American Indian Law [Link: Ray elected Chair] conference in Austin. We try to get to the capital city whenever we can to see good friends and of course Anaka and family. We left mid day on Thursday after Turtle's nap and cruised in to Austin around dinner time. Leaving post nap was very interesting. This is the 1st time we've ever travelled at a non-nap time and boy oh boy! That kid talked the.entire.trip. Not just toddler jabbering, either. Questions and comments that we had to address. If he said something and we didn't reply, screams of "Mama, Dada, Mama, Mama, Mama" would continue on until we did. Needless to say, we will try and plan as few non-napping commutes as possible from now on!

Anyway, we checked in to the hotel and headed up to Harrison's house. It's been a couple months since the boys last saw each other, but Truitt was plenty excited. He is really starting to identify his friends and seriously enjoy playtime with other kids. Harrison was excited, too, but to see Cookie, not us. Harrison and Cookie have a mutual admiration society, much to Linus' chagrin. Elizabeth and Michael were kind enough to let Cookie crash at their pad for the weekend. She loves it over there and Harrison loves her being there, so it's a win/win.

The next morning, Dada left early for his conference. Turtle and I enjoyed a nice breakfast at the hotel and waited for Elizabeth to pick us up. The weather was sooooo very nice and we were excited to have some outdoor time. Of course, we first had to swing by the mall and check out what was supposed to be this huge sale at Janie and Jack. There wasn't much left in the way of sale merch, but Harrison and Trutt still enjoyed reeking havoc on the store by pushing their display bassinet all over the place.

After causing the sales girl at J&J to stroke out, it was off to the playscape at Zilker and a train ride. Much of the grounds of the park is closed for sodding and installation of the sprinkler system. That is going to make ACL [Link] so much more bearable. Their were lots of fun activities and Truitt was totally enamored with the old fire engine.

The boys played for about 45 minutes until it was time to hit the train. Truitt has been on the Houston Zoo train with Dada and I knew he was going to love this one, too. What I didn't know is that we were going to go through a true tunnel on the Zilker train and it would spur a new tunnel obsession.

Turtle waiting to depart; Elizabeth and Harrison

You would think our adventures at Zilker would be enough fun for one day, but oh no! It didn't stop there. After the train ride, it was time to eat and we headed to Freddie's. There need to be more places like this in Houston. They have a totally fenced in patio area and a their own playscape, complete with big toy trucks and a picnic table for the kids.

I was once again dumbfounded by my son's ability to do things I never would have guessed he could. Like scale the faux rock wall...


Finally, we had had all the fun we could handle and Elizabeth dropped us off at the hotel for some nap time. I'm not a good napper, but the black out curtains in a hotel room can make quite the difference. So much so that Turtle and I were still snoozing when Dada got home from his conference!

That night we joined the Vaughns again for dinner at Polvo's [Link].

It's a very popular place, which led to a comedy of errors for us. We called ahead. So did Elizabeth. Parking was a nightmare and we still had to wait 45 minutes for a table b/c by the time we parked our call ahead slot had been lost... The waiting area was also the parking lot. The dads had their hands full keeping two hungry and wound up toddlers in line.

Ray also entertained himself and Michael with our trick pony son doing his high school picture rendition of Blue Steel...

+ =

After 45 minutes we were finally seated- in the the bar and next to the crazy crazy keyboard player. At least the volume from his Tejano CDs and corresponding keyboard playing drowned out any insanity from the boys. I will say, my food was very good but wow...

And, lastly, no trip to Austin is complete unless Truitt gets to see his gaggle of cousins. We headed to the north side on Sunday morning for breakfast with the clan. XOXOXOXOX

Anaka and Alivia; Livi shows Turtle the love.

Ashley and Kyle lead the toddlers on a chase; family picture, such as it is

We packed a ton in the short time we were there. It was a great trip and we hope it's not too long before we make it back that way. With Elizabeth and I both due to pop out wee ones in May, it might be a while if we don't do it sooner...