Fun in Austin

We started off the summer with a bang.  We are loving living in Austin.  There are so many fun things to go do.  We went to this fun family scavenger hunt around the Contemporary Art Sculpture Garden.  There were clues left around that you had to follow, and during the course of solving the mystery you got to tour the sculptures.  Pretty much everybody's favorite was this tall metallic guy, except Leona.  Her favorite sculpture was this:

It's a weird fountain where the bunny is crying out highlighter yellow tear streams.  She talks about the crying bunny a LOT.  Maybe she will be an artist someday.  She does seem to have a deep connection to this piece of art.

We also got a visit from Evelyn! She was nice enough to come from Houston and hang with us for a couple of days, along with her mom. :) We went to the Nature and Science Center where we unearthed dino fossils and saw rescued animals, went swimming, and probably most important in Eliza's mind went to Torchy's Tacos. While Evelyn was here she gave Leona a small stuffed elephant. Originally she was just meant to play with it during the visit but Clara and Eliza both warned Evelyn that she shouldn't let Leona play with anything if she wanted it back.  Evelyn graciously decided to let Leona keep the elephant which has quickly become her all time favorite toy ever.  She carries it around with her all. the. time.  She sleeps with it, it sits on the counter to "watch her eat", and is frequently just in her arms walking around.  She is in love with that elephant.

We also hit the snow cone trailer that was only a couple of blocks away from our apartment.  We were going to all ride bikes to get there but the trailer had a flat so it ended up that only Eliza and dad got to ride there and the rest of us drove. This makes up another one of Leona's conversation loops this summer.  While we were there part of Leona's snow cone fell on the ground and a dog ate it.  This story combines some of her favorite things, namely dogs and treats so we hear it a LOT. Actually her longest sentence to date is a summary of this occurrence. "Doggy eat Nona's snow cone. OK." The last part was from us reassuring her that it was no big deal that the dog was eating her snow cone.

We celebrated Father's Day one week late (since we were in Flower Mound on Father's Day because Lily's baptism was the day before) and dad wanted to celebrate but doing things all day long.  We started out by taking him to the Barton Springs Green Belt.  There's a little trail that we hiked and alongside there are periodic swimming holes.  Next time we will definitely bring water shoes because the rocks did not feel good on our feet but it was sooo fun!  There were some tiny fish swimming around and we had a great time.  It was nice to be able to take a dip when you got too sweaty from hiking.  We only hiked about two miles round trip.There are also so fun spots to climb on rocks along the way. We really have the perfect location for the summer.  We're only about a mile away from this place.