Blues on the Green

Blues on the Green is a twice-per-month summer concert series at Zilker Park, with a great line-up!  We couldn't miss Bob Schneider and decided to expose the kiddos to a BIG outdoor concert!

This is the view from the stage area looking out into the crowd!

The kids really liked all the beach balls being thrown around in the crowd.....but they wanted to keep them all!

WildLife Ranch

The kids and I recently took a trip to New Braunfels to see the baby twin giraffes that were born at the Wildlife Ranch in May.  Apparently twin giraffes are extremely rare, with these two currently being the only living set in the US.  We had seen them on the news and on the internet, so the kids were excited to visit them in person!

They were adorable!  And I was completely fascinated by these majestic creatures.

 After we checked out the giraffes we got in our car and drove around the safari.  The kids had a blast, especially Owen, who was snapping pictures and feeding all the animals for over an hour.  We saw all kinds of animals, including bison, springboks, wildebeests, zebras, rhinos, camels, and bunches more that we don't even know the names.

This one was especially fond of our car!

 

This ostrich ate and ate and ate and ate!

Friendly llama!

Hometown Fun

We spent our first week of July in College Station, hanging out with the family!

 We watched the fireworks on TAMU campus and didn't even have to get out of the car!  Actually, this brought back a lot of memories for us, as this is how we used to watch fireworks in college. So fun to be back in the same town and the same jeep, but this time with our family of four!

We saw Micah's brothers very briefly and all of us loved playing with Noah for a few hours!

 

Owen and Pop playing checkers

We went to Lake Conroe for one day to chill on the boat.  Here Uncle Brian is teaching Owen how to drive.

brotherly/sisterly love!

Not the best family picture since Adler is passed out from exhaustion!

Micah loves fishing with his Pop and has many fond childhood memories doing just that.  It was a wonderful morning for all of us to fish with Pop.  An even more fun because Owen caught 20+ perch.  We all did.  But Owen was the only one who caught a catfish! 

Adler probably caught 5 fish, but as soon as we brought it in, she would squeal and run away.  She didn't even want to touch them!

 

Great picture of two of my favorite men!

Rounding Out June

 We've been so busy this summer that the blog has obviously been ignored.  But we are having a blast crossing things off our summer bucket list and exploring Austin!  Here's a recap of the last few weeks of June. 

Owen attended a week-long basketball camp with one of his buddies from school.  It was an excellent program put on by the Bannockburn Baptist Church and the head basketball coach of Bowie High School.  Owen is begging us for a basketball hoop in our driveway now!

This is an awesome splash pad up in north Austin near some of our friend's home. The kids splashed in the water for hours and totally exhausted themselves!

Ella and Adler

A few months ago we won free tickets to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum (from our mural scavenger hunt).  I saved our tickets until it was ultra hot outside and we managed to spend about 4 hours there. This is a gorgeous museum, but I would't call it a children's museum.  I'd love to go back without the kids sometime so I could actually read about all of the exhibits.  We did see 2 movies there, and they especially loved the IMAX movie, Flight of the Butterflies.

Dinner and sprinklers in the front yard??  Why not!

 We spent one Sunday at the Guadalupe River in Seguin with Micah's boss and coworkers.  The river was refreshing and the kids swam all day long!  This is one of the few pictures I caught on that day.

 On another Sunday we visited the Zilker Park Botanical Gardens.

Shhh.....the kids are hiding from a dinosaur!

We loved the butterfly garden there!

 

One evening we went to a movie in the park and watched Finding Nemo!  The kids bought cotton candy for $.25 and it was gone before the movie even started.

This is a particularly fun (and free!) event held once a week throughout the summer.  It's called Art Park at the Austin Symphony Orchestra's amphitheater in downtown Austin.  Each week a different children's musician performs and then after the performance they have activities arranged for the kids.  I stole this picture from facebook, but we're in there somewhere!  I love all the live music we're seeing here!