Christmas 2011 and Year End Goodbye

Because I hate winter and being out in the cold, my plan for Christmas this year was to hang around the house enjoying each others company, watching movies, eating, playing games, hiking the greenbelt, etc. After two days of cold, rainy weather stuck in the house together I decided that maybe getting out a little wouldn't hurt any of us.

I took the kids to the Jumpoline Park. They had a blast just as I suspected they would. Afterward we did a little shopping.

The next day we took a ride on the Metro Rail into downtown Austin. We checked out some artwork that was displayed in City Hall while we were there.

In short, I fell in love with that mode of traveling around Austin and plan on utilizing it more when they run the train route a couple of miles from my home in the near future.

New Year's Eve was fun this year. We played a little Ghost in the Graveyard and shot off fireworks with my neighbors until Toby arrived home from work just in time to make us all some drinks and and enjoy the midnight firework show. I think this is the first year that I was actually wide awake on a New Year's eve. I even managed to even stay up until 1:30a.m....I'm sure fueled by the late night Mexican Martinis.

I guess the highlight for the week would have to be my date with Toby. Even though Summer is confident enough to stay home alone for short periods of time, I'm not comfortable with leaving her alone at night for extended periods of time so with Lucas being here we had a in-house babysitter.

We left out around 6:00pm and grabbed a bite and a drink at Baby A's downtown. After we ate and enjoyed some uninterrupted conversation we headed to a popular location on 6th Street. Unfortunately, it was so early we were not able to go on the roof like I had wanted to do so we went next door where the roof was open already.

I was having more fun than I've had in a very long time. The view of downtown Austin was beautiful all lit up and the vibrancy of the city and being alone with hubby was making me feel like I had died and gone to heaven.

We had a couple of drinks while we listened to a band play. The band was good and only added to my enjoyment of the evening.

It started to get later so we met up with some of Toby's friends he used to work with when he worked downtown. Luckily I had enough beverage in me to find entertainment more than annoyance by the genre of music that was being played in this particular establishment.

We headed home and were in bed safe and sound by midnight. It was a WONDERFUL evening that reminded me what attracted me to my husband all those years ago.

Oh, and don't think we were talking about the kids and the home while we were out...lol.


Christmas Holiday 2011 highlights:

Enchanted Rock

There is a reason our day trip of the week is appropriately named Enchanted Rock. The place was certainly enchanting and magnificent to boot!!



Luckily I've been keeping myself in shape or I don't think I would have ever made it to the summit. It was a pretty steep incline to the top and it seemed like the more we climbed the farther away the summit got..lol.







Almost to the summit...



Summer made it to the top way ahead of us and was enjoying the peace and tranquility of it all by the time we caught up with her....



We took a break and had a snack while we took in the scenery and enjoyed the feeling of solitude..





After our break we found a small cave we explored...







A thumbs up place for sure, but I definitely would not visit this rock in the middle of summer or any temps over 65 degrees. I purposely waited to take this day trip on a cooler day (60 degrees) and we still got warm hiking up the rock in the blazing sun.