This year we celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary! Our actual anniversary was on a Tuesday so we made some plans for the following weekend. I'll try to spare you the boring details of what a nightmare it suddenly became when there actually wasn't a holiday for Columbus day like there always has been in our school district, and when Alex unexpectedly got a spot to return to in-person learning on that same day that was supposed to be a day off of school. But with friends and awesome kids Dan and I were still able to do our overnight in Austin.
We only actually spent about 24 hours on our own, but it was still good to spend time together without the kids. Our house is pretty small and it's pretty hard to get away from each other!
When I got in the car as we were leaving for Austin, there was a gift bag on my seat! I had been admiring the Kendra Scott necklaces for sometime. Dan and I even went to their store at La Cantera, but I was too overwhelmed to pick a necklace since they're completely customizeable. You pick a chain and a stone and they're cute and affordable! Dan decided to brave the store on his own and found a new stone they had and took a chance that I would like it, he was right! It's perfect. And the chain is adjustable so you can set it just the way you like it!
What a fun start to our getaway! We ate our PB&J in the car and made our way through the traffic to Austin and an art exhibit called Wonderspaces. This place has a collection of varying 'interactive' art exhibits that are fun to experience. I say interactive because you can move through most of them and experience them, it's not paintings on a wall.
Dan's always good about taking the time to try and see things from a different perspective
This large array of lights was called Submergence by Squidsoup. It was a 12 minute intricately designed light display. Here are a few time lapses of them moving around. There was etherial music as well that went along with it.
This was one of those art installations that depending on the angle you either just see a bunch of black spheres hanging from the ceiling, or a face. The piece was titled "Immigrant"
These tubes had some sort of sensor in them that changed the airflow when you walked past.
Two of my favorite pieces would not have worked with any sort of pictures. The first was a real time video of two guys in a large parking lot, pushing trash with push brooms to match what time it was. It was called Sweepers Clock. I just can't imagine the work involved in putting that together!! The second was called Myrkvior and it was a dark space that had hundreds of sections of fishing line strung at various angles, and a light on a motorized loop/hoop hit the fishing line at various angles making it look like stars and spider webs! Pictures didn't capture it, and that's ok. Some things are best experienced and not shared.
Upstairs was a VR exhibit called the Dinner Party. It was my first VR experience and you were part of a dinner party that turns awkward when the host couple shares their story of being abducted by aliens. Apparently it's based on a real couple that has documented their alien abduction and told it hundreds of thousands of times to any who would listen. And now we all get to experience it with them! It was a bit bizarre, and made me a little motion sick (surprise surprise), but it was still cool.
There were a few others upstairs, like a wall that you could share your last words and read others. There was some 3D printed art that visually tricked your eyes by the design and the lights that shone on it. There waseven a mirror maze, but after all the pretty dark exhibits, the strobing lights hurt my head so i didn't stay there too long.
As we headed to our hotel we saw a little more art on the side of the road!
We found a really good deal at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Austin. Our rate included a $25 food credit and free parking, all for the price of a regular stay at a pretty basic hotel. This place was kinda fancy! We sent the boys some videos of the fancy lobbies and extreme art. We stayed on the 22nd floor and had a nice view of the pool that was on the rooftop of the 7th floor building attached to the hotel.
View of the hotel from the interstate
View of the pool from our room. That's only half the pool too, the other half would be at the bottom of the picture.
When in Texas, you do as the Texans do. They still swim in outdoor pools in October. You would've thought we were at some tropical getaway with everyone in the lounge chairs, tanning like it's July. But it was also 99 degrees that day, so swimming was a perfect activity.
I photobombed his selfie :)
There was some construction right by the pool, so Dan did a little time lapse of the crane working.
After swimming for awhile we tried to figure out where we were going to have dinner. Austin is known across the nation for it's booming food innovations and popularity with the foodies. However, much to our surprise, downtown Austin has taken a nosedive since all of the civil unrest in the country, and I'm sure Covid has contributed to it as well. The homeless population was massive, and after driving through downtown to get to our hotel and observing the behavior of the people on the streets, we decided not to do a few of the things we had planned downtown. It was the fine line between weird city life (we've lived in big cities before and can handle some drunkeness and odd behavior) and dangerous city life. We witnessed a group of college kids being harassed by a homeless gentleman, and he followed them aggressively down the street. No thanks.
We had dinner at Elizabeth Street Cafe, which was urban vietnamese food- good but not worth the cost! And we found a yummy dessert food truck with cookies and ice cream combinations.
Oh, and we got some VooDoo Doughnuts the next day to share with the boys. Very good!
Even though we were away, I texted with alex early on Monday morning to make sure he had everything ready to go for his first day of in-person school since March! Thanks Jacqui for snapping this picture of him! He was so nervous, but admitted to me later that in-person school is so much more fun than virtual! I just hope and pray that we can stay that way- my kids are so much happier.
Cade also had a big first this past weekend- first High School football game! They've had limited time and days to practice, so it wasn't a full fledged show or anything, but it was nice to sit under the lights, hear the band and watch the game. I know Cade had a good time playing music and hanging with friends. Yay!
And just a few fun 'other' pics from the weekend. Boys finding creatures and shooting each other :)
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