Austin Road Tripper

On Monday, we took our first family road trip! We headed up to Austin for the day, mainly to check out UT Law School. Solana was an awesome road tripper! She mostly just slept in her car seat, and it was really only a two hour drive, so she did fine.

A couple weeks ago, I was waitlisted at UT Law, so I decided to go and visit and take a tour and show that I'm still interested. I'd been debating whether to go or not, and finally made up my mind in the morning that I would just run up there by myself for a quick turn-around visit. However, on my way to work, CheyAnn called and said they wanted to go! So we went.

UT was cool, but no one really wants to hear about that... No, the most exciting part of the trip was hanging out with CheyAnn and this little person:

We enjoyed Austin, and Solana and CheyAnn played in a park while I sat in on a law class, and then we headed to a cool place for dinner out on Lake Travis, called Oasis. Lake Travis is probably 20 minutes west of Austin, and it's about as close to mountainous as Texas gets, which I loved. It was a fun drive with a lot of winding mountaintop vistas. CheyAnn and I traded "Reminds me of Montana" and "reminds me of California" comments the whole way there and back.

The restaurant sits at the top of one of these mountains, something like 400 feet directly over the lake, and to an ol' boy from Texas, this was one of the best views I've ever seen down here. CheyAnn, however, was less impressed: "There are tons of restaurants overlooking the ocean in California." While that may be true, it didn't diminish our great experience. Solana, who established herself as an excellent road-tripper, was also an excellent restaurant patron, enjoying avocados and cheerios.

On the way back, we of course stopped by the outlets, and got hooked up.

Next up: Dallas in a couple weeks, then Virginia in a month!

I said, "Solana, look at that silly big metal bird!" She thought that was really funny, and then CheyAnn took the picture.

Nope, it's not the Mediterranean Coast. Not in Montana, either. It's the Texas Hill Country!

And that's pretty much the cutest person you'll see all day!