It's True, Everything is Bigger in Texas

I'm a horrible little sister. My sister Tracey has lived in Austin, Texas for nearly 3 years and up until this last weekend I had never gone out to visit. Tracey has been after me to come to down for ages and we were finally able to convince my parents that I should go with them on their next trip. First thing is first, Texas in April is lovely. I wore shorts and tank tops the entire time and got just a bit of sun on my shoulders, so nice. Second, there is so much food, I nearly fell into a self-induced food coma. Third, even though I took my camera I didn't pull it out once, so all my photos are from my phone (I really need to work on using my camera and taking more pictures!) And fourth, nieces and nephews undoubtedly make trips like this so much more enjoyable.

Our flight was due to leave Thursday evening, but soon after we got to the airport we found it was delayed nearly two hours. As annoying as it was, I was okay  The airline gave us ten dollar vouchers and I went and bought myself a caramel apple. And it was delicious.

My sister being the gracious host she is stayed up way later than normal and came to get us. We arrived at her house were her two adorable kids were sleeping, she informed me that she tried to get her four year old Sam to write on his chalkboard "Welcome to Texas, Bethany". Unfortunately, Sam had his own greeting in mind, so I got this instead.

For those of you who can't decipher the handwriting it says, "Happy Birthday Elly Texas is fun you no." Grandpa also got to the board and added the extra note to the side.

We spent most of the weekend bumming around, we checked out the University of Texas-Austin campus, fed turtles, did a bit of shopping and visited a few local attractions. And we ate, A LOT. I got to ride in the car by this little cutie.

  

We also made a trip to Cabela's where Sam got to drive a side-by-side ATV.

And visited Zilker Park were we rode the Zephyr. We have a tradition in our family that no trip is complete until we ride a train of some sort. You can blame my railroader father who has made all of his grand-kids train obsessed.

We also were able to devour some of the biggest soft pretzels I've ever seen, and they were as delicious as they were huge.

 Then there was a visit to Terra Toys, where I found some adorable plush toys.

Yes, you are indeed seeing a plush egg cell and sperm cell. This is how babies are made everyone!

It really was a great trip. We had a lot of fun and it was so nice to spend some time with my family without having to worry about work and other distractions. If my sister stays in Texas much longer I'll be visiting again very soon.