Everyone needs an Uncle Bill

Yet another weekend full of adventures this time shared with Uncle Bill who came up from Houston to visit and explore our favorite hometown Austin.

We begin on Friday night with a trip to South Congress where there are a lot of cool little shops and restaurants.We found parking and walked up and down for awhile before finally deciding on…

savory crêpes from a food truck!

I can’t remember what Shawn and Uncle Bill ordered but I got a shrimp curry crêpe and it was delicious and even had a little bit of a spicy kick to it!

Uncle Bill is excited about his crêpe!

I think they use a spinach batter for their savory crêpes. Thai Tea was great with my curry shrimp crêpe!

Then it was time to spray on the bug repellent and grab some grass to wait for the famous Congress Bridge Bats to make their appearance.

We're all waiting...

We arrived around 8pm as the website suggested and we stayed until  9pm but the bats didn’t grace us with their well-known mass exit. Instead, apparently due to the recent rain which invited many more buggies to stay under the bridge, very few bats actually left from under the bridge preferring instead to “dine-in”. Oh well. We could still see some flying around but it was a little bit disappointing to wait outside for so long and not see that many bats fly around over head. We could have been exploring the funky shops of South Congress but oh well, that will just have to wait till next time.

We then made our way to the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz to watch “The Expendables”. It was such a fun experience because we were able to watch it with all the real fans and then the Alamo Drafthouse fans which are a breed of their own. There was cheering and applause at large explosions and cool stunts and of course we enjoyed their homemade peanut butter cups so even if it wasn’t an oscar worthy film it was an enjoyable experience and worth Uncle Bill buying the tickets and food. Thanks Uncle Bill, you’re awesome!

After the movie we took Uncle Bill on a quick walking tour of 6th street and the Warehouse district but it wasn’t even midnight yet and school hasn’t started so it wasn’t quite as crazy as it may have been on a weekend during the school year around 1:30am.

We then retired for the evening because we had a busy day planned for Saturday!

Up and at ‘em Saturday morning when we met Uncle Bill at Sculpture Falls. We’ve lived in Austin for 7 years now and we had never even heard of Sculpture Falls until we came back from France! Anyways, so you hike about 45 minutes out on a mostly shaded rough trail until you come to the Falls.

Uncle Bill by a cool tree on the trail

Now, the Falls aren’t as high or quite as Fall-ish since it hasn’t been raining lately but there was still a pool of water to swim in which was quite refreshing after the long trek.

The first time we went to Sculpture Falls we took Serisse and she LOVED it!! I mean, she doesn’t normally like swimming but something clicked at Sculpture Falls and she was just swimming up a storm! We were so impressed! So, this time I made sure to get a video of her first swim.

Serisse post-swim (that's a happy pup!) and Uncle Bill admiring the beauty of Sculpture Falls

Shawn jumping from cliff into Sculpture Falls pool. Serisse looks like she's considering jumping too...

After swimming around in the Falls for about 1.5 hours we treked back to the cars and then drove to the house where we’re currently house-sitting in order to shower and change.

We had planned on going to the Ice Cream Fest downtown but decided that we might as well just get ice cream so we found an Amy’s Ice Cream and got sundaes!

We all scream for Ice Cream! It's Shawn's favorite.

After Ice Cream we went over to our church building to help fill back packs with school supplies for needy children in a nearby apartment complex. However, we arrived about an hour after the event started to find that there were 300+ people there to help and that almost all of the work was already done! Uncle Bill and I were able to put some supplies into two bags but we were too late to feel like we really helped.

grabbing supplies to fill our backpacks

Even though we weren’t even able to completely fill our back packs we still enjoyed the cookout provided by our church.

burgers, foot-long hot-dogs and frito pie!

live music

3 inflate-able water slides, one dunk, an inflateable bouncehouse, and an inflated slide made this party really popular with the families w/ young children

From there we went downtown to check out Mellow Johnny’s (Lance Armstrong’s cycle shop, which was closed so we just saw the outside), Book People, and REI basically to get out of the heat. Then it was time to go to our next adventure: Annie in the Park

It was a crowded show!

Uncle Bill and I waiting for the show to start

The show was a lot of fun especially because it included songs that weren’t shown in the movie. It was also the last show of the season so it was even more special.

You would think that we would turn in after that but NO! We are adventurers!  We decided to stop by Flipnotics, a local coffee house where an indie jazz group was playing and where we got some more dessert.

Tea, coffee and nutella cake...at 11:30pm. YUM!

And that, y’all, was just Saturday!

Sunday after church we decided to take Uncle Bill to one of our favorite Tex-Mex restaurants that has really good food even thought it’s in a strip mall! They had some awesome live music too. Gotta love Austin.

happy Sunday!

this is what Shawn ordered and it was delicious!

We love this place. If you live in Austin or if you come to visit and you’ve got some time check out Azul Tequila. Shawn just raves about their beans and how he’s always satisfied when he leaves the restaurant. I ordered my favorite flautas mainly because I couldn’t decipher the ingredients in the other dishes!

From there we went to some open houses with Uncle Bill just for fun and then we took him back to his hotel so he could drive back to Houston. Thanks Uncle Bill for yet another totally awesome, adventure and fun-filled weekend!

Then, not having seen little L.E.A. all day Saturday and since we were in the area, we decided to stop by for more cuddles.

Shawn with sleeping L.E.A.

isn't she precious? 8 days old.

ready to go for a walk!

Ally and L.E.A. ready to go to the pool?

She’s a super sleeper apparently so Mamma and Papa were trying to keep her awake but no luck. She was persistent and wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t even open her eyes!

wakey wakey L.E.A.!!

Another friend and her baby Emi playing in the pool! So cute!

Everyone loves holding little L.E.A!

So that was it y’all. We eventually went home and slept…hard. Recovering today and developing plan of attack for the upcoming week. We’re learning how difficult it is to live outside of Austin when all of our friends and other activities are in Austin. Lots of $$ going to gas. But it’s a nice place to live so no complaints here!

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