A Family Saturday

I have been feeling a real need to get out and enjoy some natural beauty lately. I always feel so much better physically and mentally when I am able to get out and do some trail walking. Forget yoga, there is nothing more relaxing to me than trampling in the woods with the sounds of nature all around me.

Our plan for the day WAS to walk the trails of Bull Creek. We even made our weekly Walmart trip to pick up Toby's shop supplies last night so that our day would not be wasted on errands.

To my disappointment, the weather had turned from 85 degrees to 35 degrees overnight. It was not in the forecast but all of us southerners know the weather is very unpredictable from day to day and hour to hour.

We even contemplated going on and following through with our plan. After debating it, I decided the mixture of 50 mph winds and the shade of the creek would not make me a happy hiker. Yes, I am a weather sissy.:-)

It was pretty easy to find an alternate plan. There are a few museums we still haven't been able to visit yet so we chose the Elizabet Ney Museum. She was a world renowned sculpture who resided in Austin many years. Of course, I would have never known who she was if it weren't for the museum.

The museum was actually her home where she did most of her work. The house reminded me of small castle. The inside was really neat. It had a lot of winding staircases and a neat little upstairs viewing room with a door out to the balcony. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take any pics of the inside, but here is some outside pics:



Here is Toby playing like the gatekeeper. For some odd reason he likes to play like he is a character when we go to places like this. His antics make our trips to museums much more interesting. :-)




After the museum it was time for lunch. We decided to check out a different restaurant. Hoover's has been featured in Southern Living Magazine and many other cooking magazines and articles. It is one of the few southern/soul restaurants here.



The food was very good and a nice change from the usual TexMex. Summer and I ate the barbecue chicken. It was super delicious. The barbeque in Texas can't be beat. I don't know what they do to get their barbeque to taste so scrumptious. Barbeque is also a big thing around here and the Mexicans cook the best barbeque I have ever stuck in my mouth.

After our stomachs were full we hit Target just for the fun of it. No pics of Target...I'm sure everyone knows what a Target looks like. :-)

Before we headed home we stopped by Toby's tattoo shop so he could pick up some stuff he needed. I got a pic of the outside of the shop but I would have felt a little weird about going around taking pics of the inside of the shop.



I would have rather got a pic from the front of the shop but then I would have had to run across the busy street....'round here you will get ran over jay walking.

I believe Toby has finally found a home at this shop. He is doing so well there that he will be putting in his 2 week notice at Siddons on Tues. We feel very grateful Siddons was there for us while Toby was looking for a tattoo shop home.