One Year Together!

Daniel and I celebrated our first anniversary in beautiful, sunny Texas. We were getting kicked out of our room at his grandparents' house for a while anyway, so we decided to get a hotel in Austin and see the city.

We started at the Saltlick BBQ restaurant in Round Rock. They had some pretty good food, but we liked the pork ribs the best.

I meant to take before pictures, too, but... I forgot...

Outside the restaurant.

Next we headed into Austin and checked out the Capitol building. It's even bigger than the nation's capitol! So it's true when they say everything's bigger in Texas. It's also a very beautiful building! And inspiring to think of the dedication in building it before they had all the machines we have now. So much thought and work and care went into it and all the amazing buildings from that time period.

The central dome

It says "Texas" everywhere... the tour guide said "Just in case you forget where you are"

The senate room. 

These are the ORIGINAL desks and they are beautiful! They had some artists in there restoring them while we were there.

"Texas" in the lights, haha

The House was in session. There's something important about that tree, but I don't remember what it was, haha

The building from the outside. Does anyone know how to flip pictures?

Next we headed to "Mount" Bonnell. A whopping 106 STEPS to the top. Like literal stair steps.

But there was a nice view from the top. There was also a view of the city, but it was far away and didn't look that impressive in the picture.

The silly steps!

Then we checked into our hotel and checked out the Arboretum shops. We were still full from lunch, so we got some ice cream and rode the weird stone cows. I'm still not sure why they were there...

I'm firing guns. Because we're in Texas and that's what people do in Texas!

Daniel scolding the ashamed cow.

Then we headed to the Trail of Lights for some depressing Christmas cheer. We heard it used to be really good but the people who originally did it sold it and it got lame.

Our favorite was the tunnel of epilepsy:

So we tried to get out of there as fast as possible

All of the exhibits looked something like this. But at least this one has something to with Christmas! Not all of them did...

This was the one exhibit with Jesus. And he is creepily huge...

But there was a nice view of the city lights at the end!

After that we headed back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub for an hour before they closed it. The next day we saw The Hobbit in the morning. It was a really nice couple of days and we think we'll make a tradition of mini-vacations for our anniversary.