A Day in Austin, TX

Nine years ago, when we chose the name for our son Austin, we had no idea how much he would love his name. He always talks about the city, Austin, TX, being his favorite ...that it's his dream to go there some day to serve his mission or even live there. Once, he even did a report for school on the city as one of his "favorite things". When we had the chance to take him to Texas, we knew that we had to find a way to spend some time to show him this great city. It was only a 2 1/2 hour drive from Emily's house and the best part about it was to we got to met my brother and his family there, who live in Houston, TX.  It was a just under a couple hours of a drive for them too, so we met them at the state capital and loved spending the day together. My borther, Matt, has been to Austin several times, so he knew the best places to go and took us to amazing BBQ restaruants to eat at. It also was one day shy of Matt's 30 something birthday...so we packed a birthday picnic, spread out blankets on the lawn and ate lunch in the gardens of the beautiful capitol building. We even had birthday cupcakes, blew out candels and sang "Happy Birthday!"to him.     

Can you see Austin in his cowboy hat running up the hill?

Our picnic

Looking up into the dome from the inside main floor

Cousins...Kayla, Austin, Preston and Nathan

Looking down the center from the top floor

We visited some amazing parks, the State Capitol, ate lunch at the gardens, the University of Texas, and found a shirt for Austin. It was great to see more family and spend time with them.

Cousins! Preston and Austin

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Another fun place we went to visit was University of Texas there in Austin. Home of the Longhorns...We walked around campus and visited the football stadium. We went to the botanical gardens and a played at a fun park before we headed over to the origianl "Stubb's" restaurant and had the best BBQ ever!

Kayla, Nathan and Emily