Labor Day 2009

Yes I know I am the worst blogger EVER. I'm pretty sure John's not going to believe me when I tell him I posted these pictures from our trip! I only brought our point-and-shoot since our hotel was kind of ghetto and I didn't want to lug my camera and lenses around. Our trip was wrought full of horrible hotel neighbors, but lots of great company and great food!

About a week before Labor Day John and I were talking and we decided to take an impromptu vacation over Labor Day weekend. Since his company was bought out by a real company, he actually gets paid holidays. So knowing this was the last holiday til November, we decided to just go for it! We didn't know where we wanted to go and even til the day before we didn't know what hotel we were going to stay in. Usually I like things planned out, but I was just happy to get away for a few days. :)

John brought up the idea to go to Palestine to ride the Texas State Railroad. At first I thought it was the lamest idea. I know Ben loves trains, but the thought of sitting on a train for a couple of hours on a vacation didn't exactly sound great to me. But after looking up the info I discovered it was the 1st Annual Railfest and that it might actually be pretty fun! Plus, Ben hasn't ever ridden a real live train (besides the TRE) and who knows when he will grow out of that!

So we packed our stuff Friday night, booked our hotel, and headed out Saturday morning around 10. Railfest didn't even get started till 11am so we didn't exactly want to be the first ones there.

Ben seriously LOVED riding the steam engine. I loved that it was only a half hour trip, but honestly wouldn't mind taking the full trip to Rusk sometime, too.

We got to our hotel in Austin in time for dinner (Chili's) and got a horrible night's sleep. There was a little league soccer tournament that weekend and we just happened to be lucky enough to have the loudest most obnoxious kids across the hall from us. Running and yelling up and down the halls until late into the night. Even calls to the front desk and trips to their room from security didn't quiet them down. Ah well!

On Sunday morning we got up and took a tour of the Capitol. I'd been when I was 9 or 10, but it was still cool to see. Ben had no idea what it was, except that it was a REALLY HUGE building with cannons out front. After that we grabbed some lunch then headed down to Kyle to check out the location of a wedding we're shooting there next year. We didn't take a chance on interrupting the preparation for a wedding that was going on, but it's really beautiful!

After grabbing a late lunch we headed back to our hotel and took a NAP! Then we picked out a small pizza place close to Congress Ave since we were going to see the bats!

Now, the bats were kind of a bust. With the 1,000+ people there you'd think there would have been more of a show, but the massive amounts of people were pretty much the problem. The group of 10 or more people in front of us decided to stand up, and the "lady of the group" promised everyone the bats would be swarming up high over the bridge. Well, the really just fly out and around the under portion of the bridge. So we stayed for nearly 2 hours to see them, and Ben couldn't see a thing because no one would sit down (if they had there would have been much more of a show). So we just left. I tried to upload a video John took of it, but it was too big. It was really hard to tell what were actual bats anyway, but I promise you there are THOUSANDS!

Luckily our crappy hotel neighbors quited down before midnight on Sunday night. We got some decent sleep and headed to the Texas State History Museum the next morning. We really wanted to take Ben to see the Imax movie Under the Sea in 3D. We walked around the museum till our 11am showtime and the museum is actually really cool. Four stories of pure Texas history including a huge exhibit on Galveston Immigrants. And they had plenty of interactive buttons to keep Ben occupied. I don't have a lot of patience for boring history museums but I might actually like to go back sometime.

Now the 3D show was another thing. The promo poster was this big bright colorful poster. I went in fully expecting to be underwhelmed. We've never seen a 3D movie and I didn't think it would be anything to brag about. But it was SO COOL. Unfortunately for Ben, SO COOL to us means UTTERLY TERRIFYING to him. The kid hates loud noises and hates anything remotely scary. And of course they have to show all of the scary creepy fish! It was literally all it was. The dark, creepy, jumpy, scary fish. Fish eating other fish, seals eating fish, sharks eating seals. Less than 15 mins in Ben lost it and I had to take him to the top and sit inside the door while he clung to me for dear life. Then the 2nd half of the movie was all about global warming and how it's killing our coral. UUUUGGGGHHHHHHH.

So we went home. Stopped off for some good home cooking in Round Rock and drove the dreadfully slow trek up 35. Ben fell asleep pretty quickly and John and I had a nice peaceful drive listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I think that's my favorite thing about road trips, listing to Harry Potter books on tape. Nothing better!

We had a great time, and Ben had a great time. He still talks about the train ride at least 2 times a day. And the bats, even though he didn't even get to really see them. Hopefully we'll get to take another trip again soon!