Spring Break

It's always nice that Thad and Dad's spring break match up because we always get to squeeze in a few fun things around town as a family! I'm sure in the future we will go on vacations during this time because it will be harder for the kids to miss school and dad to have time off, but for the past four years we have stuck pretty close to home and had lots of fun doing it!

Brian and I started off the week heading to SXSW with the Hatches again! It is such a cool event that Austin hosts every year during this time and we would have gone down every day with them if we didn't have to pay a sitter for the entire day! We did take the kids last year, but it's not really a family friendly event, so we headed down ourselves this time.

We started off at this random event and the country of Brazil came through with music and dancers and everything and they had Audrey and I go in the middle and dance with them! Brian only got a video of me, but here is Audrey with the main guy:

I should have taken more pictures, but we checked out a few more booths/events and made our way over to YouTube- 

They had some cool virtual reality stuff and a really fun photo booth!

We tried to get a good picture of the four of us, but the booth was on the fritz after our shots, so these are what we ended up with.

The next day the Hatches were able to get into the Trade Show and we were super jealous because we weren't able to get in the day before, but they brought us some Swag to help us feel better- 

I let the boys have a play date with friends and they were as pleased as punch about that!

Mid-week we headed to the library and ran into some friends that came for the Nintendo event that we didn't know about. Unfortunately Nintendo canceled last minute because of SXSW but they still set up the video games for kids to play.

 Sometimes it drives me nuts that they have stuff like this (and iPads) at the library because kids get so much of it outside of the library, but they were super excited and waited in line for a long time to make it to the front row. Eve really want to play with Thad and Oliver!

That evening we headed to THE Round Rock. Yes, Round Rock is named after a Round Rock and after 3.5 years of living here we decided it was time visit!

  

I've driven past it a million times, but didn't realize it was there...oops! Now we know! 

The next day we headed down to Austin as a family to check a couple things off our bucket list. We went and saw "Africa" in the IMAX theater at the Bullock Museum and the kids loved it! So did I!

After the show we headed to the LBJ Library that we have wanted to visit for a while! 

It was incredibly windy, but we had to document! 

 This would have been a little more fun for Brian and I without the kids, because they didn't want to watch the whole movie or read all the stuff, but we had an awesome time anyways and maybe Brian and I will go back on our own before we move. Maybe.

  

I don't know if these pictures were before or after our Austin adventure, but I'm pretty sure these cuties stole my phone for some silliness!

Silly brothers!

To finish spring break off with a BANG, we went on our annual Duke-Monsen hike over in the hill country and then hit up another SXSW event in the evening with Ben and Shannon.

 This is by far the most difficult hike we have done in Texas, there was A LOT of elevation change, but everyone did pretty good and made it to the end without losing a limb or dying of dehydration.

 Tyler.Thad.Cali.Wes.Alyssa.Matthew

The creek was where we hiked to and then we turned around and headed back. The kids had a lot of fun in the water and even though we told our boys not to get wet, they ended up soaked by the end. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!  

Date night was so fun as we headed downtown to watch James McMurtry perform. Brian has been to a couple of his shows, but I had never seen him and it was a blast! Doing anything with Ben and Shannon is always so fun and I'm glad we got to do this before they moved to Arizona for their new jobs.

 (Don't mind the creeper that wouldn't duck out of our picture.)

I have to say, that was a pretty successful spring break!