San Antonio

The reason we spent my birthday on a plane was we were flying back from Texas where we spent a week house hunting and meeting up with Jacob’s new business partner and his family.

At Bradley, Anna was really excited for the plane to be ready. She danced around and kept asking about the plane. We watched our luggage get on the plane and defined the color of every plane, chair, and suitcase. She was jumping, dancing, and laughing, right up until she saw her seat and seatbelt. Oh right, flying also has its downsides, she remembered. Jacob showed Anna how fast the plane was going during take off: he would reach forward then*whomp* his hands would fly back at the high speed and hit himself or Anna. She copied him all day. She looked like she was just hitting herself, but I thought it was pretty adorable.

The highways in Texas have the highest speed limits! I don’t think our car has ever even attempted to go 80 mph, but there Jacob was in our rental car, flying to keep up with that speed limit. Whoa. The rest of our trip didn’t really slow down after that. Well, we had to slow down for all the odd left-turns and lighted U-turns north of the city, but our days were packed full! We spent three full mornings checking out our top picks of houses in the area we are thinking of moving to. And spent the afternoons napping hard with Anna, looking at more listings, and doing chores for the business. Those days were quite an emotional roller coaster, and honestly we are still on the ride as we try to iron out all the details of moving, eek! But we are figuring it all out, and Anna knows how to say Texas better than Connecticut. She loves Yankee Doodle, aka the pony song, so we think she’ll fit right in in our new state.

Our one “break” was the Ausin Maker Faire. Jacob and Jonathan were running a booth for their electronics. Anna and I hung out with Kenny and Zach, Jonathan’s wife and 18 month old son. Kenny planned a trip to the Austin Zoo. There was a peacock just roaming around. We saw wolves, turtles, monkeys, large cats, and birds. Anna was really good about staying with our group and making sure Zach was nearby. She loved having a friend around. (She had a hard time when we went to move her car seat back to our car, it must be much more fun to ride with a friend.) We rode the train around the western terrain. The kids loved the train! Anna’s favorite place might have been the steamy reptile house but mostly because she got to use a step stool all by herself. The zoo was quite, uhm, rustic, we ended up not being able to use the stroller at all. But I’m glad we found something for the kids to do. They crashed in the car and when we got back to the faire we only had half a day to kill with babies instead of a whole day.

Anna and I found plenty to do to keep us occupied. There was this juggling and hula hoop station and we all know how much Anna loves hula hoops. We found a sand and rock garden to rake and arrange, robots to watch, a rebel sitting in an x-wing, multiple bands playing, ponies, and many many “princesses” (pretty much anyone in a dress). There were different sections: crafts, education, electronics, steampunk, robotics, and local groups. Anna and I wandered a lot. I always had to stop and check out the handmade earrings and Anna wanted to make a bar of soap with a toy in it but cried when she found out she couldn’t play with her pretty plastic ring right now.

We spent a good long while playing with legos though, making towers, chapstick, and zoos. The weather was great and we loved walking by the river. We tossed some rocks and watched the riverboats, kayaks, and canoes. The view of the city was lovely. We are pretty excited about this new chunk of America that we are about to be a part of. 
We wrapped up our visit in San Antonio with a visit to the Witte Museum. There were dinosaurs, Texas history, and light-up dance floors. Their dinosaurs were animatronic and were really entertaining when they surprised some of the school kids. *RAWR* Please note Anna’s chomping, meat-eating teeth hands. *nom nom*

“Look Ma, I’m moving to Texas!”

Our trip was ended on a happy note by playing in the Austin Children’s Museum. Anna rolled ball through loop-the-loops, made paper helicopters, played vet, cashier, and chef. We also got a little bit of Rock Star out of her too near a tambourine and pretend microphone. The place was fancy filled with pneumatic tubes for transporting toys and all sorts of areas of play with ample seating for us adults, including at the cafe counter where Anna brought me plenty of fruit for lunch.