"Austin Blues"

This past weekend, the girls/Colin and I made a whirwind trip to Austin to "get out of Andy's hair" while he hosted 2 open houses on our home. No buyer yet....but it has not even been 1 week that it's been for sale! Anyway...it was a last minute trip and I asked the children what THEY wanted to do (even though I knew what we were going to do!). SWIM was all 3 of their answers, and Ellie said she wanted to go to the Mall of America. When she realized a trip to the MOA would take up her entire Saturday, she changed her mind to "just swim".

However, after we decided to go to MN, Mar and Lar surprised us with 4 tickets to "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. The girls LOVE this play (I'm sure everyone knows that by now!) and I knew they'd be amazed at seeing a professional production of it. The girls had no idea until they arrived in Austin....and my mom led them on a little 'hunt' to find out what our Saturday plans were going to be.

Bright and early Saturday morning (8:30am!) we were out the door and en route to the Twin Cities. First stop: Tucker and Maggy's new home where the girls had a very short playtime with 2 of the Gorden Girls. It was special to see them play so nicely and love Grace and Annabelle so much--until this summer, we have hardly spent any time with them.

The above picture is of Grammie and Grampy with the girls after the play, with the girls and I after the play and the Gorden/Glynn grand-girls. The missing grand-girl is Caroline...but she was with Tucker and Maggy at a wedding.

The "Joe-fuss" shirts....the girls were so excited to have me buy them shirts at the play--they had to put them on OVER their clothes as soon as it was done. They LOVED the play; the looks on their face were almost too much for me to handle. It was a very special experience for us...THANK YOU to Grammie and Grampy.

Our 2nd stop (before the play) was Fuddruckers for lunch. Fuddruckers is a safe place for Ellie to eat--she LOVES to build her own burger! The girls had SO much fun with Oscar--as you can see, he had lots of little mommies looking over him. Colin also loved Oscar--he was very into trying to get Oscar's attention! Oh, how we wish we lived closer to our family! (Yet, why are we complaining, we USED to live much further away!)


The children DID get to swim--all 3 days that we were in MN....they, of course, loved swimming and even got to swim with 2 neighborhood boys, Hayden and Roger. They also took advantage of Grammie and Grampy's big driveway and figured out how all 4 kids could ride on the princess Jeep!

Finally....you might be wondering why the title of "Austin Blues". Andy and I *love* a certain Hormel pulled pork called Austin Blues. My Dad had gotten a sample of it years ago, we loved it and then just prior to his retirement, he found the sales person for that product and got us some. Of course, that was enjoyed years ago. While the girls and I were at the play, my parents babysat Colin and ended up at Costco....guess what they found? AUSTIN BLUES Pulled Pork! YUM YUM. They got us some and last night, we had it for dinner. What do you think Colin thought of it? Click here for a good video and let us know what you think...