Hula Huts, Hiking, and Heavenly Texas Treats

Chuy's Hula Hut

Without doubt, the most exciting time of the week for David is Friday night.  After a long week of work and regular homemade meals, we get to go out to eat.  Usually by Monday he's decided where we'll eat on Friday, and then he spends the entire week anticipating it, looking at menus online, and deciding exactly what he'll order.  This past weekend it was Chuy's Hula Hut.  Chuy's Mexican Grill is a well-known and highly recommended Mexican restaurant, and the Hula Hut adds a Hawaiian spin to it.  The best part is its location, which is right on the water at Lake Austin.  It is beautiful, though lighting makes it hard to get a picture that does it justice.

Us and the view from our table at Chuy's Hula Hut.

One last attempt at a good picture of us.

Mount Bonnell and our Texan "Hike"

On Saturday, we drove out to a place called Mount Bonnell.  I found descriptions of it online, saying things like, "Quite the hike!", "I would do it more often if the hike didn't kill me", and most of all, "DO NOT do this in flip-flops!  Be sure to wear good walking/hiking shoes".  Well, I was a little nervous with the heat and it being so close to sunset time, but we decided to be adventurous and we set out.  Imagine our surprise when we arrived to find the :hike" was nothing but a stone staircase of about 100 steps, railings and all!  I can't say I was too disappointed with a shorter hike, but I have to say the view from the top left nothing to be desired.  It was gorgeous!

The view of downtown from Mount Bonnell

The view of the river looking Southward.

David showing Paisley the sights.

The river looking Northward.  These houses were incredible!

Paisley's turning into quite the little hiker.  She doesn't like to hold onto our hands
 unless she gets to a really tricky part.  She'll say "self" when she wants to do things
on her own, and "help" when she needs it.  It's pretty cute.

These are the steps that made up our "hike".  paisley wanted to do these on her own too.

The Bats

After our Mount Bonnell adventure, we decided to go downtown again and see if we could get a better view of the bats.  Did I explain the bats before?  Well, if I did, I didn't know very much about them.  On Congress Ave downtown Austin, there's a bridge the crosses the river.  In the 1980's, it was reconstructed, and the design included large crevices beneath the bridge that made perfect homes for bats.  At first there was a city-wide panic about them, and there was talk about having them eradicated, until it was found out that the bats were actually harmless.  In fact they do the city a huge service to the city by eating 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of bugs each night!  It also creates quite the attraction as they come out nightly during the summer to feed.  Every night, hundreds of people line the bridge and surrounding areas to watch the bats swarm out to get their nightly fill.  

It's pretty tough to get a good picture of this event, so I stole one off the internet
for the sake of documenting it.

This was the picture we got as the sun started to set and the crowds started to gather.

FHE and the Delicious Ice Cream

You may wondering, does this bucket of ice cream really deserve its own subheading?  If this is what you are thinking, clearly you have not tried Blue Bell Dessert Trio ice cream.  But while I've started a whole new subheading, let me tell you a little more about Monday.  Monday nighst, we have Family Home Evening.  Up till now, we've had about every excuse to be pretty casual about FHE, and we usually just end up sitting together, or doing something fun.  On the worst Mondays, David ends up having to do homework all evening and we're lucky to get dinner in.  Well, we decided this week that we're going to do something different.  I realized that as many teaching moments as you can come across in a family (family scripture study, going to church and just day to day things), there aren't too many times set aside to just talk about gospel principles and the teaching of Christ (yes, I realize those are the same thing).  So we've decided to take a few minutes each Monday evening and take turns teaching gospel principles from Preach My Gospel and the scriptures.  This week, David taught us about the love our Heavenly Father has for us.  We talked about the ways he's shown us his love in our individual lives, and as a family.  It was so nice to take a few minutes and realize how much God has blessed us with, and how grateful we really are for one another. 

And of course, no FHE is complete without ice cream (plus it's probably my biggest pregnancy craving - yes, I'm blaming it on that), so we went to the store and got this bucket of rich vanilla ice cream, loaded with chunks of pecan brownie, chocolate cake, and a fudge swirl.  Yummmm...