SXSW Create

Last week was a little crazy! Tuesday, I went out to lunch with some friends to say good bye to a friend who is leaving for Arizona soon. Jacob and I ended up taking Anna over to their house later that day to hang out and we had a fun time eating food truck tacos and riding on the golf cart around the neighborhood. Anna got her first taste of barbie dolls and Jacob checked out a 3D printer in person.

We love our new Friday morning play date that has become a regular meet up at the park and usually just walk on down in the stroller. Anna loves having a group of kids to play with in the sandbox and friends to chase around. She is finally picking up on names and even making sure she knows what to call the adults we see regularly.  Her new favorite part of Sunday is getting to the chapel early so she can go say hi to friends before Sacrament starts. This past Sunday, she wanted to show her blinking badge to her old nursery leader, they chatted forever. Anna loves to talk to everyone.

This past Friday, my wonderful friends threw me a shower at a local restaurant after the morning play date. It was so nice having so many friends to sit around with and chat about kids, hospitals, and especially little boys. I can’t believe my little boy will be here so soon. We now officially are stocked up with plenty of cute outfits and diapers too. I got some adorable swaddling blankets, maybe this baby will be less stretchy and stubborn than Anna was so I can use them (not that we minded one bit not having to wrap up our child, with that and her loud crying we swear she came out 3 months old, ha). We are so grateful for our supportive ward and what a treat Anna had opening all the gifts for baby brother.

Saturday we somehow found the energy to make a huge road trip to Austin. There is a large conference up there for a few weeks called South by South West (SXSW). We just wanted to attend the free event that was hacker-ish and also similar to a maker faire called SXSW Create. There were some big brands like Made magazine and Sparkfun and even Texas Instruments. I got to sew up a light-up badge at Sparkfun’s booth; they were giving out supplies to try out their fabric circuit kit, LilyPad. I sewed together a rocket ship with a red light for Anna to wear.

Everyone was showing off their robotic helicopters that are all the 3D printer rage right now. Anna colored a water bottle and had so many buttons and stickers on her shirt we couldn’t even count them. Anna also scored a pretty sweet rainbow tattoo. Then we wandered into the gaming expo nearby and met some people from NASA talking about their new telescope project. We scored an expansion pack for Settlers of Catan and we met the inventor of Fluxx. I thought it would be a video game or app expo but I was happy to see some board game stuff too. We had such a great time.

Anna napped on our drive north to IKEA where we picked up a new chair for Jacob’s office and a storage bin for Anna’s craft area. I’m not sure how it all fit in our car but woot! We pigged out on chocolate cake and meatballs, oh how we miss having Swedish meatballs regularly. Anna hilariously played with what was already at the play kitchen. She cooked up some stuffed mice. The drive home was long since IKEA is on the other side of Austin but we had a fun fun day. Anna was a good helper putting together all the furniture once we got home and covering us adults in her extra stickers. Jacob finds some weird stuff for us to do sometimes but it always ends up great.