California Visitors

This weekend Uncle Matt and Aunt Lindsay came into town.  They arrived from Houston Saturday afternoon and we packed up and went to the Black Star Coop.  A beer coop with some good food.  I had a delicious chicken sandwich and Logan had some yummy Mac and cheese. I brought Izzy's food and she was totally fine with that.  I'm much more comfortable bringing her food to places we've never eaten at before.  The kids were very pleasant and it was a low key dinner.  

Saturday we got up and went to the Architects of Air Exhibit downtown.  We tried going for the past 3 years with no luck.  Either the lines are too long or it was sold out.  This year we did it!  Only about an 80 minute wait.  Luckily the weather was beautiful so the kids ran around while we waited in line.  Not really sure I would go again.  It was cool, but no way I would wait the 4-5 hours people waited last year.  Logan did ok but it was clear he was on sensory overload.  We weren't in there too long when he said he wanted to leave and started covering his ears.  He was having a hard time.

Can you believe I was all set with the new camera to take pictures and my battery died?!  So annoying!  These are fromy phone. Sure wish I had the nice camera!

Waiting to go in.

All of the light inside is natural light.  There aren't any lightbulbs or anything.  Pretty cool!

After that we headed over to Jester King Brewery.  Such a gorgeous day!  Once again I packed food for Izzy (and Logan). Just easier than dealing with calling ahead, etc.  This place is sort of in the middle of nowhere so I wanted to be extra careful with the food.  Luckily Izzy couldn't care less about food at this point.  It sure was family day at the brewery.  Almost everyone had kids and the place was packed!  Such a change from 2 years ago when I went last.

Special treat-Izze's!

My thumb photo bombed the pictue!

When we got home Logan was on total exhaustion overload.  He was totally wired.  It was crazy.  Matt and Lindsay took off (I'm sure they were more than reasy to say bye to the kids!) and I immediately got the kids bathed and ready for bed.  Put Logan down at 6:30pm and izzy followed shortly after.  Izzy woke up a few times during the night  (just wouldn't be normal of we did t get women up at least 3xs with someone needing something) bit Logan slept until 7:00am!!!!  He must have been totally exhausted!

Tomorrow school is on a 2 hour delay.  I have a feeling it might be cancelled again. (It was cancelled last Friday).  We just can't handle sleet and snow in Texas!  And I mean that not in a 'oh you guys are pansies' way but in a 'we had almost 300 wrecks on Friday because of ice' way.  Our cars, roads, and emergency crew just can't handle winter weather.  We don't know how to drive on it either!  No shame there!

Visitors!

First some random pictures!

Logan's swing is up!

Like a boss.

Snacks.

Delicious pumpkin loaf!

Sad soup.  :-(

Sad bread.  :(

The Yuans came to visit us for a few days this week.  We had fun hanging out and playing.  We hit up the Austin Science and Nature Center for a little bit and then showed Elizabeth what Chick fil a is all about.  Yum!  Mark stood in line for 3 hours at Franklin's BBQ and treated us to some delicious food.  Not sure if I would be willing to wait 3 hours for it, but it was good!  You have to get in line around 9 or 9:30am to get guaranteed food when they open at 11am.  Mark got there around 9:45am and didn't get food until about 1pm.  This place sells out every single day.  Crazy!

We stayed up talking too late most nights and Isabel had her fist real sleepover.  Elizabeth and Isabel shared Izzy's bed and managed to get some sleep.  The first night it took a long time for them to fall asleep and they were up from 4:30am until 6am or so, but then they fell asleep until almost 9am.  Last night they slept until 7am.  I think Isabel is pretty tired from all of the toy sharing and fun.

Elizabeth and Isabel

Friday I'm having some old coworkers over.  I'm excited to see them again, but not excited about all of the work I have to do to get the house back in order.  It's amazing how quickly hours of cleaning and work can get destroyed with 4 extra people in the house!  Totally worth it though.

Since I didn't get this post up before the weekend I'll update that too!  Friday my lovely friends stayed until almost 1am!  We had a lot of fun laughing and catching up.  I do miss those girls.  I love that we started out gossiping about former coworkers and then ended up discussing Obamacare.  We are a bunch of smarty pants if I do say so myself!  ;-)

This weekend we stayed close to home and watched college football Saturday.  My Aggies!!!!  What a great game.  So glad LSU won too.  It poured last night for HOURS.  Like really serious downpours.  It was amazing.  Brian said we got more rain in 12 hours than we did all of last year!  So there was flooding going on today in parts of Austin.  The last day of ACL Fest was cancelled due to flooding at Zilker Park.  Crazy.  We made a trip to Ikea.  We needed to pick up the hooks to put up Logan's swing.  We searched the whole house last week looking for the silly hooks.  So after everyone is in the car ready to go I said 'hang on a minute, I need to get the Ikea Family card.'  Yep, found the hooks!  Since the kids were really excited about going to Ikea (they get to play in the play area while we shop), we decided to go anyway.  We dropped the kids off and went to the cafeteria for 99 cent breakfast!  Woohoo!  A pseudo date!  While we were there we wanted to check out the flooring options for Isabel's room.  We need to get that carpet out soon.  Ikea is discontinuing their flooring line.  I thought maybe we could get some for cheap since we just need to do a small area, but it was too much of a hassle to try and find someone and look at samples.  We picked the kids up and left.  I did pick up a new cookie sheet!

I put together a meal calendar for Logan's teacher last year.  She had back surgery and was in the hospital for a week.  We're going to try and provide meals 3xs a week for a month.  My first day is tomorrow and I'm attempting to make another pumpkin chocolate chip loaf.  I made a huge loaf when the Yuans were in town and it turned out perfect.  So good.  The problem is is that I have no idea how to bake it.  It was in the oven and the power went out for about an hour and a half.  I decided to try and salvage it and rebaked it.  It worked!  The chicken tortilla soup in the crock pot and bread in the breadmaker couldn't be saved.  I didn't want to be responsible for food poisoning so I tossed the chicken.  It was sad.

More random pictures from the camera.

Hike a couple of weeks ago.

Waterfall behind us....kind of.

They were SO tired. 

Logan was done.  Good thing it was just a few hundred feet back to the car!

Beds! Visitors!

I just said goodbye to M, big A and little A. :(. We had such a great visit. We did absolutely nothing besides go to P. Terry's for a burger yesterday. I felt bad, but just hanging out at home was sort of amazing. The weather was beautiful on Tuesday so we played in the back yard a lot. Her girls are so ridiculously sweet and well behaved. Big A was so great with Logan and really looked out for him. Of course Isabel was just excited to be around some big girls. She played well with them until last night when she was hopped up on sugar (M made cookies. If you didn't know- she makes the BEST cookies. 2nd only to GGB) and decided to give little A a nice push. Other than that it went great. M even froze cookie dough in little balls for me to bake later! Can she move in?

Before getting burgers at P. Terry's Isabel had dance class. It was cold and a little rainy out so I didn't take Logan to the nearby playground like I normally do. I tried to wrangle him and run around with him outside the studio while waiting for Izzy. M caught a catty bitch talking shit about Logan and almost threw down. It was so awesome. I had no idea what was happening. She was like 'if you didn't have to come back here next week....' Haha. That girl has my back! It was hilarious listening to her retell it to Brian. My favorite 'what? Are we training for the Olympics here?' The 2 classes going at the time are a 2-3 year old and 3-4 year old creative dance class. Real competitive.

We took a couple of pictures but I'm not going to post them because I know M is super private and doesn't like photos of the girls online. She looks exactly the same as she did when we lived in CA 5 years ago. When she tells me about a beauty product I immediately go out and buy it because I want her secrets to looking amazing! The girls are beautiful and have really grown up. Big A has always been super sweet and caring and seeing her reading and talking like a little lady is such a trip! I wish Viv was able to hang out with her and trade 1st grade gossip. We didn't make it out to the cemetery and I feel terrible about that.

Last weekend Grammy and Papaw came over for a visit. We spent almost the entire weekend looking for a bed for Isabel. We had the hardest time. There was no way I was spending $1200 on a bed and I wasn't about to pay $500-600 for a non solid wood bed. We hit up some resale and consignment shops and still didn't find anything. I found the perfect bed online at a store in Houston and my parents were nice enough to check it out for us. Unfortunately it was off white, not white. Long story long we bought one at overstock.com and it will be delivered on Monday. I think it's the same thing we have in the guest room, but in white and a full size.

I bought a mattress Monday. It was sort of a debacle. I bought a kind of cheapie one and then they didn't have it in stock so let me have the nicer one for the same price. Brian went across Austin to pick it up and while he was filling out paperwork the guy loaded it in the truck. We get home, unpack everything get Isabel excited about it, and we have a full size foundation and a queen mattress. Since it was Presidents' Day the store was open late. So Brian called and said we needed a bed that night since we were having company in town. They called around and finally called back and said he could come pick up a new one (across town again). So we ended up getting a pretty nice mattress when it was all said and done. Since they didn't have the one we purchased in a full we got a nicer one. Mattress sales are such a racket. The markup is crazy.

I'm looking forward to cleaning today while the kids are at school. So much to do. I decided to relax and enjoy the short time I had with the CA crew and pretty much didn't do any cleaning while they were here. It was so nice.

I'll attach a picture M took this morning before Brian took them to the airport. It's a great "you look nice and I look like shit picture." Also one of Logan because he's so cute I could just eat him up. And yes, those are princess heels. :)