Wildflowers? In Austin?

When we moved here people raved about the wildflowers.  Just wait til spring, they'd say. All the bluebells and wildflowers, it's beautiful! Then spring came, and some tiny 6 inch bluebells began to sprout here and there in random fields. Giving the color pop that dandelions do on a weedy lawn.

I wasn't impressed.

I thought to myself, are these Texans so starved for beautiful landscape that they really think these are something special? I settled on that. Texans are a little dillusioned, after all (did I just make up a word?).

Then this winter came. Wet and wonderful, unlike last year. And with that moisture came a very different spring.  Bluebells and the miles and miles of beautiful yellow wildflowers lining the free way and every open field in sight.

Okay.  I get it. It is pretty.

Seeing Green

Our family has a yearly tradition of eating an all green meal on St. Patty's day. This year we roped Becky and Rob's family into joining us.

Becky made a delicious lasagna with noodles dyed green. We had green dinner rolls, green salad with green goddess ranch dressing and mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert. Mike was a little chicken eating seconds of the green lasagna (even though he loved it). He decided in years to come we're just doing green pancakes (maybe I'll sneak in green eggs too) :)

These aren't our dinner, but look a bit like what we ate :)

What did you do for spring break?

We're not very exciting. We're the first to admit it. But our poor kids seem to pay the price after any break. "What did you do this summer?" is frequently met with "Uh. Nothing."

In an attempt to give them a tad more exciting answer we took them to a local ice cream factory for a tour. The tour was free and we got to try their delicious ice cream at the end! Yum!

                                          

Here they're loading up some of their Sweet Cream Ice Cream (vanilla without vanilla in it)
The ice cream is almost like a silky, thick whip cream when it comes out.

Found out that ice cream has a little bit of seaweed in it to keep the ingredients from separating.

Freezers to harden the ice cream a bit.
They make up to 800 gallons a day. Not bad for a little company.
Their best seller is their Mexican Vanilla Ice Cream. The have over 300 flavors
including a maple bacon, and jalapeno ice cream.

Girls on the Amy Cow

Nothing like riding a blue cow by a busy street.

They had a fun playground outside their shop.
Macy was loving this spinning sit.