Hot Turkey! - November 2012

Playing at the water park in November.

November was decidedly odd. It was very hot, hot enough we would take walks down to the fountain park on the waterfront. In November. Did I mention it was November?

Josh and Mirabel at the zoo.

Anyway, November was hot and fun. We had Groupon tickets to go to the zoo with the Ancers, but Scout was running a fever of 104, so I suggested Mario and Josh have a playdate with Jose and Mirabel. As Josh is currently wild about lions and assorted safari animals, he was over the moon about seeing a real lion.

Josh seeing his first real lion (that he can remember, at least)

We had a very quiet Thanksgiving. We had plans to have dinner with the Ancers, but Josh came home from school with a bad cold and Scout was sick again, so we exchanged food with them (as we were each cooking half the meal) and ended up enjoying Thanksgiving separately.

We took advantage of two partial days off for Mario (he often (read: almost always) works a few hours from home on holidays while the kids are sleeping) to visit two more local state parks.

Pedernales Falls State Park

 










The first was Pedernales Falls State Park. We went in November, so there weren’t many “falls,” and it was crawling with people, but it was quite beautiful. It was a series of large pools linked by small streams of water, with evidence of some pretty strong currents in the past. 

Son of a!

 

 

McKinney Falls State Park

The next day we visited McKinney Falls State Park, which is only 20 minutes from our house. I’ll admit I was pretty shocked that a place like this is only 15 minutes from downtown Austin. The pools were beautiful and very intriguing. 










Scout started walking the first week of November. She had taken lots of isolated steps before then, but she put all the pieces together and was off like a rocket! I guess it helped that she had someone to chase!