Austin Pictures

Here she is... the reason for our visit to Austin. We all went to help Alyssa celebrate her 5th birthday. We were so lucky to get to be there!

We got to go kayaking for the first time at a lake near their house. We saw lots of turtle heads popping up and down in the water. We saw three snakes on branches near the bank, all of which slipped into the water when we got too close--eek! We are seriously all addicted to kayaking and will be watching garage sales for kayaks of our own someday. The picture below is of my (giant) brother in his (mini) life jacket. We were not too sure that it would really keep him afloat.

In addition to the great party favors (including garbage pail kids!), my mom made them each their own bag with matching pajamas and puppies inside.

Now these pictures were mysteries to me when I uploaded the pictures from my camera. My sister is a professional photographer and did studio shots of all four kids in their matching pajamas. I never took pictures of any of the kids in her studio, so I had no idea where these came from. Basia likes to "borrow" my camera these days, but that wouldn't explain the picture of her below. When interrogated, Basia admitted that she had taken my camera into the studio for the picture of Alyssa and that Alyssa then took a picture of Basia.

There was some good, old-fashioned game playing going on as well. I believe this is a game of War, but there were also games of Cutthroat Rummy, Guess Who, Battleship, Connect Four, and Spades. My brother-in-law wouldn't want me to mention the game of leg wrestling, though.

We live in the desert, so we are used to extreme heat. In Austin, they have been having the same types of 100+ degree temperatures with humidity added to it. The kids got to cool off one afternoon on the slip n slide.

We really had an awesome time and were so glad that we all got to go!