On Friday, we headed to San Antonio to stay with one of Jimmy's good college friends, Brett. He and his wife, Stephanie, had their first baby, a boy, in July so we wanted to meet Gregory and it had been a long time since we had seen Brett and Stephanie.
I was pretty nervous about the drive down with Brayden, knowing how much he loves to move around and hates to sit still. I was guessing with stops it would likely take us around 7 hours to get there and sure enough it did. Brayden did pretty good most of the trip. Toward the end, he was definitely done. Our first stop was at a roadside rest area. My mom suggested this because I wanted to stop somewhere that Brayden could crawl around and I wasn't about to let him crawl around a McDonalds or something. So, we threw a blanket down and had a roadside picnic on the side of I-35.
Our next stop was to do a little shopping :) at the Round Rock outlets. I had a few stores I wanted to go to - Crocs and Stride Rite to get Brayden some "early walker" shoes since we now have to take shoes to daycare each day as he gets closer and closer to walking and we had no shoes that fit him because we never put shoes on him (it hinders them learning to walk). We actually did great about only getting what we went for and Brayden got two new pairs of shoes.
Shopping with my new crocs on :)
From Round Rock, we drove straight through to their house. We had bought a DVD thing for the car so that helped keep Brayden distracted from the fact that he was stuck in his carseat, but like I said earlier he was very done being in the car by the time we got there. He pretty much complained about having to get into the car the rest of the weekend but it wasn't too bad.
Friday night once we were there we went out to eat at a good Mexican restaurant. This was the first time we ordered something off the kids menu and Brayden got his first cheese quesadilla although he was more interested in the peaches I brought (the boy loves fruit!). He also enjoyed watching other little kids at the table next to us -- he hasn't quite learned that it's not nice to stare. ;) We then went back to the house and just hung out until the babies and mommies were tired and went to bed.
Brett, Gregory, Brayden, Jimmy
Brayden was quickly showing Brett and Stephanie how non-baby proofed their living room was...
As you see Jimmy holding most of the stuff from the table
Saturday morning, we had a delicious breakfast made by our hosts and Brayden tried to feed some of his food to their dog because Brayden thinks that's what he is supposed to do with the beggers (Gracie and Molly definitely know this). :) We then left and headed toward Austin. We didn't really know what our plans were for that day in Austin. We intended to walk around campus, go to a Texas Wesley reunion event that evening and see my good friend Suzanne and her fiance, Zach, at some point. Suzanne and Zach were busy that morning so on our way up we decided to make a detour to the Salt Lick. Jimmy had never tried it before and he was craving barbecue. I believe Jimmy gave it a thumbs up. Brayden wasn't so sure about the sauce though.
Once we got to Austin, we checked into our hotel. We were staying at the (relatively) new AT&T hotel on campus which was perfect for our trip. The hotel was pretty nice and being on campus was awesome with everything within walking distance. Brayden was overdue for his afternoon nap when we got there but he was not having trying to take a nap in the room, so we decided to just throw him in the stroller and go and hope he dozed off at some point, which he did.
At the Salt Lick
We went to the co-op to do a little shopping and got Brayden a new Bevo stuffed animal and UT soft football. We also let Brayden play in the kid area in the co-op for a while so that he could move around a bit. After the co-op we headed to the alumni center to check it out and see what was going on there. Originally our intent was to go to the football game but when I found out I had to pay for a ticket for Brayden I chose against that especially considering Jimmy didn't really want to go either. So we hung out at the alumni center a little while letting Brayden nap in the stroller in the A/C. Then, we headed to the Wesley house for the reunion.
Last time I took a picture here was for graduation... now with my baby boy! :)
Hook 'em horns!
And of course daddy thought he needed to turn the horns upside down :(
Playing in the co-op
At the alumni center, they required Jimmy to wear a longhorn sticker :)
Both boys were so excited to be at the alumni center :P
The Texas Wesley is a Methodist campus ministry that I was involved in during college. It was good to see some people I had not seen since college, except on Facebook of course, as well as see Suzanne and Zach. Many people there had small kids/toddlers so Brayden had entertainment and there was a big green ball there which of course he enjoyed playing with. Before I even saw the ball, Brayden started saying "baa" (ball) and pointing and trying to get down.
By about 6:30pm, Brayden was reaching the end of his rope since he had a very limited nap in his stroller so we had to head back to the hotel. On our way we picked up Schlotzsky's for dinner. Once we got back to the hotel room Brayden got a bath and the rest of the evening was interesting. The only way we could get Brayden to go down in the hotel room was to darken the room, turn the TV off since he could see it from his pack n play, and we couldn't really even talk while he was falling asleep. We also had to rig covers for the pack n play sides so that Brayden couldn't easily see us sitting/laying in bed. He finally gave up on us and went to sleep. Since we couldn't turn the TV on (and the UT game wasn't even on TV anyway), we plugged Jimmy's phone in and sat on the floor eating our dinner and dessert and watching a hijacked feed of the Longhorn network on Jimmy's iphone. That got old after a while so we ended up just going to bed early.
So tired after a long Saturday...
On Sunday morning, we hung around our hotel room until it was time to head out to meet up for an early lunch with Suzanne and Zach. I'm so glad we could make that work because we really did get to talk to them too much the night before. We went to Trudy's (of course) which is my favorite restaurant and we always have to stop there when we're in Austin. We ended up being there for a pretty long time because Suzanne and Zach's church service got out later than normal so by the time we were all done, Brayden was very tired for his afternoon nap. We said our goodbyes, loaded up and hit the road.
Breakfast in the hotel room...
Coloring at Trudy's
The rest of the trip unfortunately did not work out like we had planned so we actually ended up coming home on Sunday, which turned out to be fine because we then got to hang out with some friends on Monday at the Arboretum, which will be in the next post. :)
At a McDonald's for snack time on the way back...
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