Home Sweet Austin . . . Again! - October

We spent our first week in Austin in a vacation rental while we looked for a house to rent. Mario had been keeping tabs on the rental market since about February, so it only took us a day to find the place we wanted. We’re in a neighborhood fairly close to where we lived last summer, just about two miles from Mario’s office. We love our house and are quite settled now. 



We’re really enjoying being back in Austin. The mosquitoes here are at least as bad as they were in Alaska, which was a bit of a shock since I don’t remember there being many at all last summer. Josh got all these bites in ONE EVENING. One of the reasons we picked this house is it has a huge (relatively for this

Fun with boxes!

neighborhood, anyway) backyard, but we can’t really use it because there are fire ant mounds every few feet and the mosquitos are so bad you can’t be outside for more than a few seconds without them finding you. It has gotten a lot better since the weather cooled down, but man it was bad for a few weeks there!

Mario and I both love concerts and have been to a fair amount by ourselves, but we’d never been to one together. When MCA of the Beastie Boys died earlier this year, I realized the bands who I listened to during my high school years are getting old. And seeing Weezer, who is perhaps my favorite band of all time, was bumped to the top of my bucket list. It just so happened Weezer was going to be at Austin City Limits this year. So of course we simply had to go. 

Austin City Limits is a yearly music event similar to Lallapalooza where there are multiple stages set up in a huge city park, so you can see a dozen bands play in a day. We had all-day passes, so we brought the kids down during the day. Josh had fun in the drum circle. Then we visited the Kiddie Punk Rockers tent. We had some wonderful food and listened to some really great music (the Wombats KILLED IT, just in case you were wondering) and then took the little ones home for naps. 

We left them with a sitter and went back to ACL for the evening. It’s not every day you get to check something off your bucket list. Weezer was perhaps the most satisfying performance I have ever seen, and the list of concerts I’ve been to includes Blink 182, Rage Against the Machine, MC Hammer (yes, you read that right), Mary J. Blige, Boyz II Men, Smashing Pumpkins (on 4 separate occasions), and others I can’t recall at the moment. They were all pretty amazing, but Weezer was the best. Period. Maybe it’s because I love their music so much. 

 







We had some more awesome food (crispy artichoke hearts with spicy aioli, watermelon with goat cheese and pop rocks, and kimchee beef burritos to name a few) and then saw the beginning of the headliners for the evening, the Black Keys. We left after about 10 minutes because they SUCKED. I mean, I enjoy their music on the radio and stuff, but live they sounded really, really horrible so we left. But it was still a huge success. And we already have tickets for next year’s ACL! 

Road trip! - September part 4

Sourdough waffles!

Our first stop on the way to Texas was San Francisco. We had a pretty long day in the car and ended up in a hotel right on the waterfront. Our typical day of sightseeing someplace we’re interested in usually consists of bookin’ it from one place to another so we’re sure we do everything we want to do. This time was a totally different experience. We just wandered all day long. We started with sourdough waffles at Boudin’s on the pier and slowly made our way through the city to Chinatown. 
 
Ah, Chinatown, how your buckets of strange dried things and random weird smells took us back to our dear sweet China! We found some really wonderful things that made us smile, like some essential Chinese cooking utensils, our favorite sunflower seeds that we never traveled without, and the BEST instant noodle soup on the planet. We picked up some wicked awesome steamed bbq pork buns on our way out  and then indulged in a dark chocolate Ghirardelli ice cream sundae before we loaded up for another long day in the car to Las Vegas.

Tired girl - that Ghirardelli sundae did her in! Gotta hang on to that spoon in case there's more ice cream to eat when she wakes up!

Aunt Wendy is always so much fun!

Scout enjoying some tickles and TV.

 In Vegas we got to stay with my aunt Wendy and her family. We got tickets to see La Reve, which was awesome, and then got tapas at Wendy and Phil’s favorite place -

Josh and Macaiah.

Firefly. Bacon-wrapped figs stuffed with almonds and drizzled with a red wine reduction and blue cheese crumbles? Yes, please! Yowza. We visited a Greek festival for some lovely baklava and other assorted delights, and enjoyed some of Phil’s famous carne asada. 
 
 

Mario's gramdparents.

From Vegas we made the short hop to Mesa, Arizona to visit Mario’s grandparents. We had a great visit with Lois and Bob, and had the chance to visit some other friends from law school nearby, the Lloyds.

The Lloyds!

We had almost weekly playdates with the Lloyds in Boston, and had a great time catching up.

Santa Fe

Waiting for bbq in Santa Fe.

From Mesa we traveled to Albuquerque to stay with Scott and Anita, my brother and sister-in-law. We planned on staying one night and ended up staying three. We also made a short day trip to nearby Santa Fe. 


They are amazing cooks and made us some delicious Korean bbq.

 




And then we were back to Texas, which was almost just as hot and humid as when we left last August. Home sweet home!

Friends, friends, and more friends - September part 4

From Foutz Week we threw Heather a little baby shower and went to Hillsboro to spend a few days with Mario’s family while waiting for Heather and Jake's baby to arrive.

Mario’s parents divorced when he was very young, and he has an extensive step family from his mom’s remarriage. They are some pretty amazing people, and they have blessed Mario’s life (and mine by extension as well as directly) in ways that simply cannot be measured. He has said that if it wasn’t for the influence of Rich and Mike Vial he may not have decided to go to college after high school. Nic and Hailey Vial gave me a job our first married year. Rich and Mike are both attorneys and had a significant influence on Mario’s education and career decisions. These people are part of why we are where we are today, and we wanted to say a very small thank you. So we offered to cook them a Chinese dinner. It turned out to be a meal for about 30 people, and if you have ever cooked Chinese food you know that is A LOT of chopping and frying. Mario and I prepped the night before for about three hours, then got up that morning and cooked all day (except for about 2 hours of church), and we still weren’t close to ready when dinner time rolled around at 5pm. Luckily everyone pitched in to help us finish up (including multiple people passing our kids around so we could both help get dinner on the table) and it was awesome. I was too busy cooking to get out my camera, but you can see a bit of our evening at Mario’s step-brother’s blog here. Josh was in heaven yet again with tons of cousins and assorted furry creatures to chase around.

We took a day just to visit with a few wonderful people. We had lunch with Mike and Christine & Co and then went to visit Corvallis, the home of our alma mater Oregon State University. We visited with one of my best friends from our OSU days, Brittney Fry, and her lovely family. We also got to catch up with Mario’s adviser from his engineering program, Dr. Deb Pence. Deb had a profound influence on helping Mario make the decision to use his engineering degrees for something besides sitting in a cubicle for the rest of his life and has been a true friend as well as a mentor.

After our afternoon in Corvallis we went to Lebanon to have dinner with an old friend of mine from high school, Kevin Mitchell, and his wonderful family. 

It was a pretty awesome day filled with really awesome people. Unfortunately we were so busy visiting with all these wonderful people that we didn’t take a single picture. We love you all even though we don’t have any shots of you to post!

The next day we headed to the hospital to meet the newest member of the Foutz family - baby Zachary was a darling and let us take some pictures of him. We brought his Tonka truck intending to take some pictures of him sleeping in the truck bed, but he was too big and I was worried he was going to roll out of it, so we placed it strategically in the background.

I forgot to mention that we also got to visit for a few milliseconds with my awesome and newly-married cousin Tiffany while we were passing through Portland for Foutz Week. Thanks for stopping by, Tippety!

On our way from Portland back to Grants Pass we got to visit some of our best friends from law school, Josh and Whitney, who happened to end up in a PhD program at University of Oregon. It was so awesome to catch up and made us miss our law school days like crazy. I don’t think we’ll ever make more friends like the ones we found in Boston. Love you guys! 

We spent the night in Grants Pass, said goodbye to all the grandparents, and started our journey toward Texas.

Bandon with the Apreotesi Family - September part 1

 
We spent a few days in Bandon on the Oregon coast with Mario’s dad, his girlfriend, Mario’s sister Galina, and her fiance Brian.
 


The first evening we wandered down to the beach, which was only a few blocks away from our vacation rental, and reacquainted Josh with the ocean. It took him a while to get used to the idea of playing with the waves.



 


The next morning we went to the beach again. 

Scout wasn’t quite sure what she thought of it all. 
 
 Josh had to find his courage again, even though we had just been playing this game the night before.
 

I LOVE this shot - it shows a lot of the relationship Josh and I have.

Screaming. Just because we could. :)

He especially loved climbing on the rocks.

 

Mario and his sister Galina.

 
 
After lunch we met up with Mario’s dad and played some more.

 


 
After that, we spent a night in Hillsboro with Nic and Hailey, part of Mario’s family. They live on a ranch. Josh LOVED playing with their four lovely girls, and continued his fascination with chasing any animals he could find. At their house, this consisted of cats, chipmunks, dogs, and chickens!