Thanksgiving Day 2008

This is our first Thanksgiving in Austin. It was not our traditional Thanksgiving but it was a good one. Even though I miss the family thing, it was nice to not have to worry about plans like whose house to visit or what to cook. I have never been very domestic anyway so this year has let me off the hook as far as having to cook.

Ever since my mom died holidays have been strange anyway. My mom was always the one that took care of everything from holiday plans to the cooking. For some reason after she died I always felt like I should be able to take over her "position" but there is no way I could ever walk in my mom's shoes and do the job she did. She was definitely the social networker in our family.

On with our day. It was a warm day in the 70's and overcast. We decided to make use of the warm weather and do something outdoorsy. We usually leave Brandi (our dog) in her kennel when we go off but I decided since it was Thanksgiving we would take her with us and let her see the "outside world". The weather was comfortable enough for her to stay in the car while we ate our "Thanksgiving" meal.

After our leisurely morning of sleeping in a little, we headed to the Waffle House for breakfast. Mobile has got Austin beat on Waffle House. There are only a couple of them here and one happens to be not far from our house. Every time we have ever been to this Waffle House it is as slow as Christmas. They do need some good management in the Waffle House in Austin.

After our breakfast we headed into downtown Austin....our favorite part of Austin. You can find any activity you want in central Austin. Our first choice was Town Lake. There is a huge dog park and miles of hiking/biking trails.

Any Stevie Ray Vaughn fans out there??





Shortly after we started down the trail we heard a band playing....like in a parade. We headed quickly about 1/2 mile or more towards the sound of the parade. Of course, right when we made it to the bridge we were seeing the butt end of the parade. I am assuming it was a UT parade because there was a UT game going on downtown.

Summer getting a drink of water from off the hiking trail.



Summer taking a break after huffing it to the bridge.




This is as close as we got to the parade....at the butt end of it. You may can see them on the bridge in the distance.



We hung around the lake a little while taking in some conversation with a man from New York and enjoying the activity and scenery of downtown Austin.

Here's one for ya.....I told you Austin really likes it's homeless people. This is a memorial for all the homeless people that have lost their lives on the streets.



After we left there we headed to an area a few blocks away where I thought we may find my parrot colony nest. We did see a huge nest but all I could see surrounding the nest were grackles. While we were there I did see some really cool graffiti.

Here are some shots:






After leaving downtown we set out to find some turkey and dressing. It wasn't really all that easy....well it was easy to find but the wait was extremely long in the places we stopped. We finally decided on Luby's. The line was long but not too long. I think next year I may cook after all......

On our full stomachs we headed to the house and watched a family movie...Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was a very good movie.

So that was our first Thanksgiving in Austin, Texas. :-)