Girl Time

Oh my gosh, Laura and I had soooo much fun on Sunday when we got together! We got in from Disneyland on Friday, and Laura had been here visiting her family the whole week. We had made plans to get together Sunday to go ice skating, and she called Saturday night to see if I wanted to go to Broken Spoke and experience down home Texas country with her. However, it was Shawn's birthday, and on top of that I was exhausted from the trip. I was sooooo sad I had to turn her down, especially since I didn't think we would have any time for girlie time the next day.

Turns out her family goes to my church so we met up after church and ate at Austin's brand new BJ's Brewery in honor of my cuz, who Laura spent time with in San Diego last year after I hooked the two of them up when I heard Laura was going to be in SD. BJ's has my cousin's absolute favorite dessert, the pazookie. We sacrilegiously didn't have a pazookie because we were way too full from the Turkey Cobb sandwich and Blackened Chicken pizza we shared. Shawn got one for his birthday with a candle in it and finished nearly the entire thing himself, so we figured that was good enough.

Afterwards we went ice skating on top of Whole Foods, which has now become a yearly family tradition for us. It was SO fun to have Laura there this year!! It was 40 degrees outside and we were all bundled up. Shawners learned to ice skate! Previously he used the two blade ice skates that fit over his shoes. This time he used the one blade ice skates with no shoes and learned to skate all by himself! It was absolutely the cutest thing ever! It's an amazing freeing feeling ice skating on top of a building in the middle of downtown Austin.

Next we warmed up with hot chocolate and toured the Whole Foods headquarters. We got a yummy fruit tarte, which we took to Mt. Bonnell and ate after we climbed to the top to see the gorgeous view and take a ton of fun pictures. Pictures, which are on Laura's camera, because I completely forgot mine!! Bummer. We ended up getting some really cute ones on hers, thanks to Brando. It was so neat to see the town I live in through the eyes of someone who loves Austin but doesn't get to visit that often, and is so appreciative of all the beauty we have here.

After Mt. Bonnell Laura and I dropped the kids and Brando off at home so we could have a girlie night. We headed to the famous Salt Lick first (oh soooo yummy bbq) out in the middle of nowhere and got lost on the way. Later Laura googled a place to listen to music on Sunday night and found The Continental Club. We headed there, a little wary of what we would find. Turns out it was the place to be on Sunday night. We heard the Heybales and watched country dancing with a very eclectic group of people - cowboys, guys with dreds, lots of guys in beanies and their girlfriends, greasers. Very fun people watching! Laura danced three or four dances with a guy who took some really neat pictures for us. I can't wait to see them! We left after midnight and had such a good conversation talking til 1:30am sitting in her aunt and uncle's driveway before we finally went our separate ways.

I can't believe how much we DID and how much fun we had doing it in such a short amount of time! I continue to be amazed at the world the blog world opens up. This is the first time I've met Laura in person, yet from the second I saw her I felt like we had known each other for years. Like a friend you haven't seen for a long time but could instantly catch up where we left of. As she put it so eloquently to a guy who was in disbelief that we had met through a blog, "We're not strangers. We've known each other for two years." I feel exactly the same way.