Christmas!!

 

We just got back from a 10 day trip to Texas for the holidays.  It was an ambitious trip to take with Austin...his longest flight, lots of new people, crazy holiday schedules, and well, just a long time to be away from home.  Thankfully, he had a great flight, slept really well at Grandma's house, and mostly was his happy self.  It was the first time we saw any signs of stranger anxiety though.  Our night out with the siblings for dinner resulted in a few hours of crying with grandma and the cousins, and several other times he seemed to get a little upset around all of the new faces.  It probably was a bit overwhelming to meet so many new people at once!

Christmas morning was alot of fun.  We opened presents at Grandma's house and played for most of the morning/afternoon.  We hadn't brought many toys, but Aunt Alex came to the rescue and gave us a ton of borrowed stuff to play with.  Austin seemed really excited to have so many new toys, and we're excited to have some new things for him to play with that are more interesting and keep his attention better than some of the baby toys that we have. 

Loving his new puppy on a string that daddy was pulling around

Taking it all in!

Whoa - those balls popped out right at me!

We definitely started to see more crawling while we were away.  He loved crawling around this house toy and peaking through the door and windows.  He even made his first trip out of one room, down a hallway, and into another room.  It was fun to see - he really just started moving a few weeks ago and suddenly he seems to have gotten much more coordinated!

The daytime didn't really have much in the way of family activities, so we took a few walks, hung out at a park, and tried to soak in the sun while we could!

We also discovered a differerent and perhaps more interesting version of a jumperoo.  Aunt Alex brought over this hanging jumper that Austin seemed to love.  There was alot more range of motion than his jumper at home and he had a blast swaying and jumping!

After several days in Katy, we drove to Austin to relax for a few days before heading home.  The trip started out well...a great drive, and a happy goofy baby:

And then Austin got a fever that didn't go away for 4 days.  Ugh.  The poor kid was pretty miserable.  We tried to keep him doped up on Tylenol when his fever spiked, and during the day that did allow us to get out for a few short hikes.  But he slept and ate terribly, and we just felt so bad for him!

Our first hotel was in Marble Falls, TX which turns out has a pretty fun Christmas light display that we were able to see from our balcony every night:

We intended to walk through it, but never made it since Austin wasn't doing so well in the evenings. It was still very cool to see from afar.  Marble Falls is also home to the Blue Bonnet Cafe, which has a daily Pie Happy Hour.  We were amused and exited to check it out, but sadly found that the owners were on vacation and had temporarily closed the restaurant.  Next time!

We definitely enjoyed the local food near the hotel.  We found a great Mexican restaurant down the road and enjoyed some tasty Tex-Mex.  Couldn't pass up a $2.50 breakfast taco at Super Taco either. 

During the first day we drove to Pedernales Falls (which Mike swore he took me to in the past, but I have no recollection).  Austin's fever was down at the time, and we hoped that the fresh air would be good for him.  It was a beautiful day at the Falls...not so much water flowing, but lots of room to walk around the rocks:

The next day we were looking for a closer place to hike, since Austin still was feeling pretty crappy.  We found a trail at a nearby wildlife refuge that went along a ridgeline.  It was a really peaceful hike with no one else really on the trail.  At one point we stopped to give Austin a bottle - quite possibly the coolest place he's been fed so far!

The rest of the trip was a little rainy and quite a bit cooler so we didn't really do much more hiking other than walking around the neighborhood where we were staying.  We did trek into Austin for a day to see the sites.  We stopped by the Children's Museum, hoping that it would be fun for Austin to have a little playtime. 

He had fun for about 45 minutes and then I think he just wanted to get somewhere peaceful to nap.  His poor fever had him napping most of the day each day.  For a few days there I think we forgot what a happy kid he usually is. On our way out of the city, we made a stop at Mike's favorite BBQ place - Rudy's.  I have heard alot about Rudy's, but still wasn't quite sure what I would think of it.  Verdict - most delicious BBQ I've ever had.  Its a classic restaurant slash gas station/general store.  Really tender lean cuts of meat and delicious BBQ sauce.  I will definitely be back for more on our next trip!

We didn't get to enjoy our second hotel as much as we had hoped since Austin was still pretty sick.  We even ended up at urgent care one night after his fever spiked to nearly 104.  But, we both took turns dipping in the hot tub and we spent the evenings out on our balcony overlooking the lake once Austin fell asleep.  A few chocolate bars and a bottle of wine, and it turned out to be pretty relaxing. Some people even set off fireworks on New Years that we could see from our room.  Although we didn't make it till midnight that night to see if there would be more fireworks...taking care of our little guy left us pretty exhausted! 

View from our balcony

All in all a great, but ambitious, trip.  Now that we're back in Maryland, Austin is back to his happy self.  His crawling is a whole new world for us here and we're definitely going to have to get some gates up and some cabinet safety locks.  He's even started to pull up onto his knees and tries to stand at times.  Its getting more and more fun by the day!