Return to Rudy's

Remember when I said we were going to Rudy's?!

It was awesome.  For a moment, it felt like we really were in Texas again, hanging out with the Mallory's like the good ole' days.  

And then I remembered my sweet baby cheeks over there...  It's no longer the good ole' days.  

I guess it's the good to'days?

Turkey, sausage, brisket, drool...

Emily settled on some ribs.  Grant & I may have had to help her finish.  We're good for that.

And the classic Logan Mallory picture.  Reminisce about those here.  Or here.  Or even here.

Rudy's rocks.  I get just enough Texas to fill my belly with food and my heart with memories. All the good stuff without all the sweating.  

Sweet Joy and Happiness...

...we're going to Rudy's today.  

Miners and BBQ

For the long President's Day weekend, we took a little trip down to Colorado Springs.  One of our favorite BBQ joints has a restaurant down there and we have been dying to get back to some Texas BBQ.

But first we stopped at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry.

We tagged along with a boy scout tour and learned all about mining.  Here they had a replica of an actual mine.  The tour guide had a working drill that she used to demonstrate how incredibly loud it was.  Will's sensitive baby ears decided that he wasn't cut out to be a miner.

Change is in the air

Life is truly excellent right now: Graduation is next week, only SIX days until Grant & I are officially reunited, my parents are coming, we're moving closer to family, and Baby T is only 2 months away!!

But with all the goodness comes a lot of change.

First, I'm coming to the realization that for the first time in eighteen years, I won't be in school next year!  School is something I have always enjoyed and been good at.  I love learning and I enjoy the structure and consistency of grading each semester.  School is predictable and grades become an easy way to track progress and to feel recognized for hard work.  I will now enter the wonderful world of motherhood, which will be exciting and new, but  will also lack the regularity and reward of grades (as well as the consistent breaks!).

Second, it is hard to leave behind everything we have built here in Texas.  Granted, it has only been two years, but the friends we have made, the callings in which we've served (my cute little sunbeams!), my girls at the studio and all I've worked to build there, and even just the comfort of knowing where I am and how to get around will be hard to leave.

Third, the irrational, hormonal feelings I can't help but have that I haven't done enough in the last two years.  We may (okay, will) never move back to Texas.  Have I learned all the lessons I needed to learn here?  Have I served those I needed to serve?  Did I truly dedicate myself to my school work and teaching like I should have?

And of course, the inevitable baby nerves that are sure to hit.  Luckily, those haven't set in yet.  I feel quite calm about Baby T coming and I'm hoping I will continue to feel that way.

Overall, I am excited for what the future will bring, I am more than excited to live with Grant again, and I am ecstatic that Baby T will be joining us soon.  Like our Bishop says, "Life is a series of separations," from the time we leave our Heavenly Father to come to earth until the time we leave those on this earth to return to Him.  The struggle of those separations is what will help me grow and become more like Christ.  Bring it on.

Easter Reunion Weekend

Grantie came home to visit for Easter!  It was a perfect weekend.  We did some shopping, ate lots of good food, and celebrated Easter together.  We took a few pictures but the settings on the camera were a little wonky so they're mediocre at best.  

One night we headed to the Gaylord Texan, a huge, fabulous hotel in Grapevine.  Instead of paying the $10 for parking we parked about a mile away in the neighborhood by our church and walked over.  

On hotel ground they have a vineyard and lots of cool landscaping with fountains & such.

Here is a view of the pool.  We didn't sneak our swimming suits in :)

Baby bumpin it. 28 weeks.

Inside the giant atrium there are a few restaurants.  Again, the camera wasn't quite cooperating (read: we don't know how to work it...) so we only got a few pictures:

But Grant did manage to snap this lovely picture:

We had dinner at a lovely little Mexican restaurant on the "riverwalk" inside the hotel atrium.  We were serenaded by the mariachi band and Grant translated "La Cucaracha" for me...  "The cockroach can't walk anymore because he doesn't have his back two legs."  Lovely.  I'll have to look up the history on that one so I'm not so disgusted...

The next day we thought we'd check out the new Legoland at Grapevine Mills Mall.

The line was well over an hour, so we just took pictures with the Lego statues instead.  Real classy.

And now Grantie is gone... again.  He's actually in Chicago this week doing some training for his new job at Fidelity- pretty sweet.  

Only THREE more weeks of this exciting long distance marriage.  The Texas spring, or rather, summer storms have arrived, bringing golf-ball sized hail, tornado sirens, and nasty, nasty humidity.  What a good time to move to Colorado!!

Cooper's BBQ

Next up on our BBQ trip was Cooper's BBQ in Llano.  I think you say that "Lah-Noh."  But Grant liked to call it "Yawn-oh."  Go figure.

They were all stocked up for the lunch rush on the last day of our trip.  Pork & beef sausages, brisket, chicken, pork and beef ribs, and even a little goat somewhere in there.  That pot on the end is a giant bucket of Cooper's sauce, a kind of thin, sweet BBQ sauce.  

You tell Mr. Bartlett there what you want and he hacks it off and covers it in sauce.  (His name isn't really Mr. Bartlett, but he looks creepy like my high school calculus teacher in this picture.  On one hand, maybe it really is Mr. Bartlett... moving to nowhere, Texas to chop up BBQ'd animals sounds like something he might do...)

Then you take your food inside where they cut it up and you can pick up all sorts of sides, desserts, etc.  The line wasn't nearly as long as at Salt Lick, but considering it was lunchtime in a tiny town, the 20-30 minute wait seems fairly significant.

Then you take your place in the crowded dining room next to Cowboys and trophies alike.

We got a lot of meat.  I think we were feeling down about our trip being almost over so we made up for it in food...  Sausage, pork, ribs, brisket, and maybe something else... can't remember.  Like at Kreuz's they wrap your food up in butcher paper and you get free white bread to supplement your meal.

Cooper's also has a self-serve bar where you can get endless beans (they were awesome), onions, and sauce.

The brisket and ribs were excellent.  Grant was especially excited to finally get some ribs on the trip.  We liked the flavor of the sausage more than at Kruez's- a little heartier and less sweet.  However, Grant still claimed Kreuz's sausage had the better crunchy factor for its casing.  

We had a lovely conversation with a few other Cooper's patrons after they overheard us reviewing Cooper's vs. Kruez's.  The man next to us told us we should have our own TV show because our descriptions were so enticing. Hah.  Winners.

This is how Grant felt about that:

We ended up with a fair bit left over so we wrapped it up in foil, filled up a take-out bowl with Cooper's awesome beans, and said goodbye to the cowboy hats, suspenders, and of course, the deer on the bright red walls.

Now, I'm starving.  Baby T is begging for brisket... Yes, he speaks now :)

Tiny trees, Texan bricks, and long, long, long..... lines

After spending the night in Austin we headed South & West in search of some more good grub.  Our chosen destination was the Wimberly Pie Co. but unfortunately it was closed.  But in our brief tour of Wimberly, I saw these Texas bricks, laughed, and had to take a picture:

We also found a cool Bonzai exhibit outside of town:

Grant was excited.  Mostly because in his inner heart of hearts, he wishes he was Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid...

I never realized that Bonzai trees aren't genetically different than normal trees, they're just kept teeny-tiny.

Pretty cool.

Now I want to grow a tiny little tree!  But considering I'm still working on keeping my tiny green pepper plants alive, I think my hands are plenty full right now :)

So we headed off for The Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood.  Unlike the other BBQ joints we visited, Salt Lick is a sit-down restaurant (however informal it may be).  

It is also extremely popular.  The hostess told us the wait was about 1.5 hours so we bought a fresh squeezed lemonade & settled in.  Salt Lick is a BYOB place and people plan for the long wait, bringing drinks, snacks, games, etc. to keep entertained while they wait.

After an hour of waiting Baby T was getting hungry and we still had a few hours drive to our final destination.  We checked with the hostess and we still had about an hour left to wait.  Blech.  So we thanked them for the lemonade (in our hearts), said goodbye to the crowds of people more patient than us, and peaced out.

Meat, Meat, Meat (in that order...)

Grant acted as our BBQ researcher for this trip.  He found the website Full Custom Gospel BBQ, a site by people who travel all over Texas and review all the best BBQ joints.  Our first stop, Kruez Market, was in Lockhart.

Central Texas has big German roots hence the name Kreuz (pronounced krites).  

Baby T was hungry after a long drive from the big D.  

After waiting in line for about 20 minutes we made it to the "pit room" where you choose your meats and they weigh it out.  You pay by the weight of your meat.  

I'm not sure these guys look German to me... but those sausages are making me salivate...

It was about a half hour before close on a Saturday night so we only had a few choices: Brisket, both lean and fat, and sausage.  Kreuz doesn't believe in BBQ sauce, claiming their meat is already perfectly seasoned.  You also have the option of bread and/or crackers with your meat.  They're really sophisticated: Wonder bread and Saltines :)

Overall, Kreuz was pretty awesome.  Grant was highly disappointed that he didn't get to try some ribs, but we were highly impressed with the flavor of the brisket.  The black, crunchy rub on the outside was phenomenal and Grant claimed the fat was especially flavorful.  I prefer my meat juicy and somewhat fatty, but can't handle eating just fat, so I let Grant eat it all and hoped it might help add a few pounds to his string-beany-ness :)

We also loved the sausage.  The flavor was good but what Grant really raved about was the skin.  It had just the right amount of crunch.  What not to get: the German potatoes.  Blech.  One bite of sauerkrauty, pickley potatoes was one bite too many...  

Next: We head West of Austin for an in-demand BBQ joint...

Heading South for the winter... or at least for the weekend

It's been six or seven months since our last Texas weekend getaway (read here) so we headed out for another vaguely planned adventure in the back country.  Last time we headed East and ended up near Tyler, TX.  This time we decided to head south and putter around near Austin, TX.  

Our actual route was a bit crazier than that but if when I added all the destinations, GoogleMaps was covered in green balloons and you couldn't read anything.  We basically navigated around the best BBQ joints around Austin.  Here is the route we actually took once we reached Lockhart, our first BBQ destination.

We packed up all our junk, including liquids.  Since the airlines hiked fares for checked baggage I've learned to travel really light.  The beauty of roadtrips: my own blowdryer, lotion, hairspray, etc. 

I also packed Baby T (as if I had a choice)...

And we hit the road!  We took highway 281S down instead of the busy, but faster, freeway 35S.  It easily tacked on an extra 2 hours, but we got to see lots of cool things.  (This overpass was on the 35... but it was cool too)

We passed a "dumb old donkey."

I named him Harvey... a few seconds ago...

A coolio bridge:

Lots of old towns.  This really is the coolest part.  Unfortunately we passed so many cool towns that we didn't have time to stop in many of them along the way.  This town is called Hico, TX:

More of Hico:

I love the feel of a road trip like this one.  Unlike an airplane flight with the stress of being in a hurry getting to the airport, trying to fit your luggage in that tiny overhead bin, and sitting approximately 1.2 inches from a complete stranger for longer than comfortable, the best part about a road trip is the actual trip part!  We didn't feel the hurry to get anywhere fast (unless the BBQ was closing soon...) and we spent hours just talking and checking out the scenery.  Most of our trip was through what's called "Hill Country" here in Texas.  It was beautiful:

Next up: the food.  The awesome, mouth watering, fall-off-the-bone BBQ.  Nobody does BBQ like Texas..... yum!!

A Rockin' Honky Tonk Evening

We just got back from the awesomest (yes, awesomest) trip to Disney World.  However, I'm already a bit behind on other adventures and thus, must document those first.  

A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit!  It has been a year since my mom has come to visit and my dad has never been out since we moved to good ole Tejas, so I was very excited.

Unfortunately, I was the puke/migraine queen all weekend and didn't get to participate much in the festivities.  You can read all about that excitement here.

Anyway, on Saturday night we headed to the Fort Worth Stockyards for the concert of the year (at least in my eyes...)

But first we wandered around and checked out the merchandise:

Of course, Mama found the pigs.

Attempt to ignore the pale sickliness look I've got going on.

There have been a few recent additions to the Peterson Family in the last few months, namely, Roosevelt, Hollywood, and Cougar.  You can read a bit about them (and see the cutest baby on earth) here.  It was especially fun to look at all the cowboy equipment with my Dad because he's the coolest cowboy I know.

We also saw a few horses hanging out on the way to the concert.  

The concert was at Billy Bob's Texas, the largest honky tonk in the world.  Despite the ridiculously smoky atmosphere, it was a pretty sweet place.  Grant's favorite part was the giant dance floor.  We might just have to go back & get our boot-scootin' boogie on.

And then... we witnessed the most impressive display of rockin' tunes known to man...

Know who it is yet? (You should be ashamed if you don't...)

Maybe this video will help.  I highly recommend listening to this clip.  However, actually watching might be hazardous to your health...

Styx (in case you haven't figured it out yet) was awesome.  Most of the band were the original members and they sounded as good as they ever have.  Thank you Dad for introducing me to awesome music as a child.  I'm listening to Rhythm of the Rain by Dan Fogelberg as I write this.  Love you.