Another Reason to Love Austin

Yesterday was the 81st annual Austin Kite Festival. It's exactly what you would think, everyone gathered together in a big park flying kites. This is the 3rd or 4th time we have gone to the festival, and it is always a blast. So, while all you east coasters were getting pummeled with snow yesterday, we were enjoying temps in the low 60s, having a glorious picnic lunch lunch with family and friends and flying kites. We got the cow kite up easily, had a little more trouble with the fish kite (needed more room and a bit more wind). In addition to everyone being able to fly their own kites, there are demo areas with kites bigger than you can imagine, stunt kites, homemade kites, everything. There is also the requisite amount of food, music, and alcohol. Really there was no down side to the festival, it's just a blast and everyone has fun!

In other news, Ben's vocabulary is ever increasing. One of the first things we taught Alex to say was "Up, please" when he wanted to picked up for any reason. It always came out sounding like "uppies". We were trying to get Ben to say Up Please or Uppies or something, what we got was "Up go". He also says "here ya go" if he's handing us something and "wanna go" if he wants to go somewhere. They all come out sounding as if it is one word instead of multiples, but it is just so cute!

Our massive garden project is off to a splendid start. We spent some time at the coolest garden center in Austin this weekend, got some plants and finally got them in the ground tonight. We actually couldn't plant them this weekend because it got too cold in the evenings. We need a few more things, but hopefully we have chosen well and the plants will thrive and fill in our huge new garden. We even found a couple of nice big rocks to fill it out.

Ben got his first haircut tonight! Alex is so good for me when I cut his hair that I didn't remember how wiggly Ben would be. Of course he is a good bit younger than Alex was at the time of his first haircut. Anyway, it's not a dramatic change, just enough to keep it under control a little bit. Yes, I got pictures, yes I need to post them, no I don't know when I'll get to it!

Ben is sprouting bunches of teeth too! For all of you that have to deal with cranky teethers I truly am sorry. It's no big deal for my guys. If I didn't periodically do a tooth check, I'd never even know a new one was coming. So, he has 3 on the bottom, one front one and one molar on top. Yep, it's kind of a weird order in which they are coming in but as long as they all cut through eventually I guess it doesn't really matter.

Surely I had many other things to mention, but I can't think of them at the moment. So all you folks back east enjoy that snow. I'll be enjoying temps in the 70s and 80s for the rest of the week!