summer adventure - days 15-19

After having a blast at my mother's house, Jed and I went to visit my brother- and sister-in-law, Laura & Dave.  Dave's teenage girls were only able to be there for a few hours on Friday evening, but I was so glad to see them at least for a little bit.  Amara & Laura loved holding Jed, and he clearly loved them too:

Jed loved playing with Micaela as well, but she preferred him from a distance of about 2 feet:

We spent our evenings watching the Olympics, and our days hanging out.  We drove to some places that overlooked the lake, and gawked at some ridiculously large and expensive houses.  On Saturday, we went to hang out at the park:

We visited the butterfly garden of Lakeway, which is usually beautiful (so I'm told) but at the moment is suffering from the drought Austin is in:

We also took a tour of Charles Umlauf's sculpture garden.  There were a few pieces inside the building but most were outside.  Everything in the outside garden was hands-on, and Jed enjoyed it. 

After the sculpture garden, we drove to Mt. Bonnell.  While Jed slept in the car with Laura to look after him, Dave and I climbed the staircase and enjoyed the beautiful view.

On Saturday night, we went out to eat at Trudy's Tex-Mex.  I mashed some of my black beans and let Jed try some off of my finger.  This was his reaction:

But he kept eating more as I offered it to him.  I felt a little bit bad, as he completely trusts me and will willingly eat anything I give him.  But not THAT bad - clearly, since I kept giving him more.  I think his disgust was more about the texture than the taste (he did the same thing with potatoes, which don't really have a taste).  When we went to Outback Steakhouse on Monday night, Jed instead opted to eat the table:

On her way to work Tuesday morning, Laura drove Jed and I to Audrey's house, where we would spend the remainder of our time in Austin.  We were both very sad to go - but excited to see Audrey and her little baby Andrew!