Trip to Austin, Texas

On Sunday, October 17, we left for a week in Austin, Texas.

The first day was an entire day of travel – which the kids were super excited about because they got to go on an airplane. We left our house at about 8:30 a.m., slowly meandered through the different waiting stages at the airport and then waited and waited at the gate because our first flight (to Minneapolis) was delayed. We finally took off and the first flight was without incident.

The biggest problem – instead of having 1 hour and 21 minutes to change planes in Minneapolis, we had just a little over 20 minutes by the time we finally landed. This meant for a mad dash across the airport with two kids.

We made it and the second flight was also fairly uneventful – and as Alex got more and more tired (she didn’t nap at all) she just watched more and more TV.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was after 6 p.m., so we grabbed dinner at McDonalds then put the kids to bed.

Because Sunday was such a long day, we decided to make Monday a quieter one. After breakfast, we went to Zilker Park (the largest park in Austin), played in the playground, rode the miniature train and walked around. That afternoon was naptime back at the hotel and then that evening we went to see the bats.From March to November every year in Austin, thousands and thousands of bats live under a specific bridge. Every evening around dusk, they all fly out to hunt bugs. It's pretty wild to see a million bats stream out from under a bridge and fly down a river.

On Tuesday, we drove the hour and a half to San Antonio where we met up with my parents to visit the Alamo and walk along the Riverwalk. Both were really interesting -- although Austin declared about 20 minutes into being at the Alamo that it was 'booorrring'. I guess to a 4-year-old, it is. We stayed until about 5 p.m., at which point the kids were exhausted and we headed back to Austin.

Wednesday took us back to Zilker Park, but this time to go swimming in Barton Springs Pool. It's a natural spring water-fed pool that is 125ft wide by 1000 ft long. It is always 68F -- which feels cool when it's 90F outside! It was fun, although because the bottom is all rock and algae, the kids had a little trouble with it and mostly wanted to be carried around in it.

Let me just say, that 1000ft is a really long way to swim. (Well, not quite 1000 ft, because one end is too shallow for swimming.) It's been 15 years since I swam any distance, but for some reason, I thought it would be fun to try swimming to the other end. I made it, but it was a long way.

After the pool, it was back to the hotel for nap and then out for some yummy yummy Texas BBQ for dinner.

Thursday we headed downtown to the Children's Museum. It was very similar to the kids area at the Science Centre, but the kids had a blast. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown for awhile.

That afternoon both my parents and Ali, Billy and Teddy arrived in Austin. So that evening, my parents babysat the three kids while the four of us went out. We met up with my cousin, Eric and his fiancé (the two people who we were in Texas for in the first place!) for dinner and drinks downtown. It was a nice evening, and a small chance to see Austin at night.

On Friday, we headed back downtown to visit the State Capitol building. It's the largerst Capitol building in the country and it's really nice. We tried to do the free guided tour, but the kids bored of it after about 15 minutes, so we just wandered around on our own after that.

By Friday afternoon/evening, everyone was pretty tired, so we hit the hotel pool and then ordered pizza for dinner with my parents and sister.

Saturday was the reason we flew all the way to Austin, Texas in the first place. Wedding day! Unfortunately, it was raining that morning, so we ended up just wandering around a nearby mall -- just to get out of the hotel for awhile. We didn't want to tire the kids out too much, because we knew they'd be up late, but we didn't want to just sit around and watch TV until 3 p.m.

The wedding was at a ranch about 30 minutes outside Austin. This place is set up to look like an old western town. The ceremony was outside, as was the dinner(thankfully, it had stopped raining). It was all beautiful and it was a really cool setting for a wedding. My whole family was there and it was nice to be able to spend time with everyone.

One (among many) fun things at this wedding was what they did for the kids. About 20 kids attended, so Eric and Monica rented a bouncy castle for them to play in during the reception! Austin and Alex are never going to be able to go to another wedding, because they'll want to know where the bouncy castle is! (In other words, they had a blast!)Austin and Alex did really well at the wedding, and were really well behaved. It was 10 p.m. when Ryan took them back to the hotel (and considering the reception ended at 10:30, they didn't miss much!)

Sunday was going home day so we didn't do much else but pack up and leave the hotel. Although, since our flight was at 5 p.m., we were able to join the bride and groom (and family) for lunch at another Texas BBQ place.

Then it was off to the airport and by 11 p.m. we were back at Pearson in Toronto. The kids were amazing on the flights home -- no complaints and no screaming thanks to a lot of TV watching (portable DVD player=best purchase ever!) Neither of them fell asleep for the entire trip home and it was just after midnight when we walked in our front door.

In all, a great trip. A little tiring living out of a hotel with two kids for seven days, but a lot of fun. And honestly, there's not much to complain about when it's sunny and 90F every day in October!