Wednesday, September 26, 2007

 

On the Road Again

For those of you who don't know and have not taken the time to do an appropriate amount of research on your favorite blogger on this world wide web, I am a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. This not only explains my ridiculously high intellect, but also explains why I have made 18 hour round trip drives with my wife and three kids twice in the past month. You see, as a graduate of UT (what we alums like to call it), I "bleed orange". That is, to say, I am a huge fan of the sports teams at UT which go by the moniker "The Longhorns". Longhorns being the most ferocious of the Bovine species what with their long horns and all.

Check out the length of them there horns!

Anywho, because of this orange blood affliction, I have been a season ticket holder for Longhorn football games since 1995. For the first 9 years as a season ticket holder, getting to the games was a piece of cake. Then, we moved to Cali in 2004. That distance made it much more difficult. Thankfully, the Longhorns, seeing what a great fan I was and respecting my reputation as a world-famous blogger, scheduled two games in Pasadena during my time on the west coast. Very thoughtful of them. They won both games, beating Michigan and then Southern Cal. Some of you may remember that second game because the winner, aka Texas, was named National Champion immediately following the game. I hate to say that was my idea, but I did mention to my buddy at the game "This is a great game! Whoever wins this should be named national champion!" Someone was obviously listening and acted quickly to make it happen. I couldn't have been happier.

So, what the hell was the point of this post? That I like the Longhorns? That doesn't seem right. Help me out here...oh yeah! Road trip. Thank god for the title of the post.

So, last weekend, we loaded up the Jetta and drove the 9 hours from Tulsa to my mom's house on beautiful Lake Travis in Austin.

Nice house, eh? You should see the views from the screened in porch! What a great pic that would have been! ;-)

We arrived on Thursday night/Friday morning around 1am. We ran into a couple construction zones and an overturned SUV which slowed our progress considerably. Fortunately, the kids slept through the whole thing...unfortunately, that meant they were wide awake when we arrived in Austin. I don't think Kat and I got to bed until close to 3am. It was rough I tell ya!
The next morning, we just chilled out by the pool and then got some rockin' sushi that night at our favorite Austin sushi place (and for you southern cal peeps, YES, there are multiple sushi joints in Austin). It was a lot of fun. Liska even had sushi!! She was quite the adventurous little girl!

So, Saturday is Game Day! The game started at 6pm, so we naturally got down to the tailgate about 5 hours early to start our drinking. This week, we had an RV and it was the bomb diggity. We were able to watch the early games and then watch the later games once we got back to our spot from the stadium. Here is what the tailgating spot looks like:



Notice the Keg to the right and the Grill to the left...everything else is just window dressing.

After Kat successfully got me home (I got very tired toward the end and Kat offered to drive), we crashed and then got up the next day and headed to the cool part of Austin. See, it is great to see my mom and hang out in Lakeway, but she is about 45 minutes out of the cool part of Austin. So, we had to venture down there. Lunch at Texadelphia and a cruise around the flagship Whole Food store (for those who don't know, it was started in Austin), we headed to a true Austin landmark...Amy's ice cream! Let's peek in and see how the kids enjoyed it:

There is a thumbs up from Liska

And a BIG smile from Hagen!

Amy's is cool...you can tell by the fact that the chick behind us has never met a razor. I felt like such an old nerd in my khaki shorts and tucked in polo shirt, but I am officially blaming that on the fact that I didn't pack for cool...that or the fact that I just turned 35 is having an effect on my coolness factor...can't believe that though.

That was basically the trip. In case you were wondering...Hagen and Liska were fantastic passengers. Nary a peep out of them. They slept and played. We normally didn't have to bust out the DVD player until the last hour or so of the trip. Such great kids. One side note...Hagen did start putting his snacks in his pants toward the end of the trip home. Not quite sure what that meant, but he is a freaky little kid.

Hope you enjoyed the play by play of our weekend...it has been a while since I have done such a long blog...i know you all missed it terribly!

Much love to all!

jak


# posted by longhorn in paradise @ 1:28 PM
Comments:
3 kids????? Was Rene there with you?
# posted by Blogger The Brown 4 : 7:34 PM
 
I know! When did we get our third kid?! Is there something you're not telling me?!
# posted by Blogger hk_kitty : 8:34 AM
 
I work my arse off to entertain you people and the only comment you have on my post is re an error I made in the first paragraph? sheesh!
# posted by Blogger longhorn in paradise : 8:39 AM
 
i'm still freaked out by the third kid! where is s/he?

other than that...lovely post. i prefer to call hagen's snack experiment as "apple pants". when we took him out of his carseat, a trail of apple dices followed. at least he knew how to get back to the car!
# posted by Blogger hk_kitty : 8:42 AM
 
OH MY GOD, who's got Rene?!?!?!

Oh yeah, Bill and Sheila! :)
# posted by Blogger Denise R. Brown : 3:23 PM
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?