Ladybird's flowers, taco time, storm cleanup: Day 3 in Austin

There was a crazy storm here last night. I woke up around 3:00 to lots of thunder, lightening, wind and lots of hail. It lasted a while. I didn't get out of bed to have a good look but I wish I did, since I was out of bed trying to coax Hope back to sleep anyway. Beth went out to the porch and saw a piece of hail the size of a baseball. This morning there were big branches down in the back yard and all over the streets nearby. Leaves are covering the streets like carpet. We didn't have internet access all day. I told Beth we were living like pioneers, no internet and all that. I mean, how did they cope? Turns out we were better off than 10,000 other people in Austin who were without power most of the day. 8,500 people are still without power and some people had drifts of hail two feet high in their yards. Crazy Texas storms.

Anywho, this morning we went to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. It was really great, better than we expected. Beth and I both expected meadows of wildflowers but it was actual gardens that were very naturalized. There were some really interesting flowers, all native to this area of Texas. The butterfly garden was devoid of butterflies today. I think they were still in hiding after the storm. We did see a bunch of very cool caterpillars though. Emily ended up seeing most of the garden in her socks because she has so many mosquito bites on her feet that it hurt to wear shoes. It was a bit funny actually apart from the nerdy tragedy of it.



From there we headed to Maria's Taco Express, Beth's and my favourite taco place in Austin. Hope spilled juice all over herself. Emily and Hope ate nacho chips and sour cream for lunch.


Neither of my kids napped today. After I tried in vain for an hour to get either of them to sleep, we went out and cleaned up the damage in Beth's back yard and then cracked open pecans on the front porch. From there we went to the playground nearest Beth's house. It's a great playground. It's fairly small but it rules. It's completely shaded, the climber/equipment thingy has 4 slides. Four! Both my kids love it. It will probably be our routine at the end of each day before supper.

I made ugly rice paper roll-ups for dinner but they tasted good. At about 4:00 things went a bit awry around here after another great day. The kids, after pushing through missing their naps, started to get whiny and squirrly. Emily stayed in decent mood but decided to contribute to the growing mayhem of Hope and Kate by asking me for something, anything every 15 seconds or so until she went to bed at 7:30. Let's just say that by bath time, I was feeling a bit testy. I tried to be understanding with Hope seeing that I discovered two canines popped through during the last 24 hours. Seriously, I could use one full night of sleep though. That would make this vacation perfect.

I'm not sure what we're up to tomorrow. It's still under discussion but be rest assured, it will be great!