Babymoon #3--According to Us

Before we have each baby, we always try to spend one weekend without our children...just to relax and get away from it all. Before we had Elina, we went to Amelia Island Plantation in northeast Florida. Before we had Eli, we went to Austin for a few days. This time we decided to go back to Austin for 2 reasons: (1) because we love that city and (2) because it was more convenient for everyone. Since J works full-time now, it's hard for her to get down to San Antonio at a reasonable hour on a Friday, especially with Austin's awful traffic. So we thought it would just be easier if B took a half day at work and then we'd drive the kids UP to J instead.

We dropped the kids off at J's work and Elina was already excited to be rid of us. Once we said our goodbyes (which the kids didn't even care about) and J hopped into the car with the kids, Elina said, "Yay! Finally! We're going to have so much fun!" Doesn't that just bring tears to your eyes?
Then we went to check in at the Brava House Bed and Breakfast. B is never a huge fan of B&Bs because he is not a fan of old places with quaint knickknacks...especially "quaint" things like older, smaller television sets. Let's just say he was less than thrilled to see the little CRT TVs in our room. See, we had brought a few movies on the laptop and B was going to hook up the laptop to the TV so that we could watch on a bigger screen. But when he saw how old the TVs were, he said, "I don't even have the right cables to hook the laptop up to that thing!" I asked him, "Are they really that bad?" This was his response, "W, those are the types of TVs people leave on the sidewalk because they can't sell them and nobody wants them." Harsh, right?? Here is a picture of us next to the TV. B put his arm around the TV to emphasize how small it is.
Other than that, our suite was nice and roomy and enjoyable.

Then we headed to dinner at our Austin staple--Austin Land and Cattle. This place has the best steaks and they even come with the sides. Imagine that. Nowadays, there are just way too many fancy steak houses that make you pay for your side dishes. Seriously, who only eats a steak by itself?? No one. Well, B had a yummy filet mignon and I had a wonderful ribeye. We were in heaven.

We got back to the B&B and got ready to watch "Angels and Demons" on the laptop. (I know it's an "older" movie, but we are WAY behind the times.) B hooked it up to this ipod speaker thing in the room (see, they had some fancy stuff) and we got into bed and started the movie at 9:30pm. By 10pm, B was already nodding off and by 10:15pm, he was officially passed out. How romantic. I decided to stay up and I actually finished the movie by myself at 11:30pm. I thought it was really good. I mean, it managed to keep me up until 11:30pm!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good rest that night. I woke up to the sound of at least 10 different birds at 6am! I was up by 7am and couldn't fall back asleep so I got up and worked on some things until 8:45am. B was still asleep, but I was so hungry I woke him up so that we could go eat breakfast. Plus, he had been asleep since 10:15pm the night before, so I figured he needed to wake up.

After breakfast, we walked down Lamar Street and did some window shopping. Then we spent 2 hours in a bookstore looking through magazines and books. This has always been one of our favorite things to do--before and after children. We just love bookstores. Then we grabbed some yummy lunch at Z'Tejas. We got brunch items that each came with a muffin. The muffins were absolutely delicious. They were the best muffins we had ever had. Weird considering this is a restaurant that calls itself a southwestern grill.

After lunch, I got a manicure and pedicure. Since I had woken up so early in the morning, I almost fell asleep during the food massage. (So, what was B doing while I was getting my mani and pedi? He was watching the rest of "Angels and Demons." And he actually ended up really liking it, too!)

For dinner we went to Jasper's. We had such a great dining experience that it might be a tie with Austin Land and Cattle for our favorite Austin restaurant right now (although our fancy dining experiences in Austin are pretty limited). We were interested in this place because J and M had recently gone and liked it and the man who owns Jasper's, Kent Rathbun, had beaten Bobby Flay on Iron Chef with his famous slow smoked baby back ribs. B is a big fan of ribs and I think ribs are a hard item to find on fancy menus, so we thought we'd give this place a try.

At first we were wary about how our night would be because our waiter took a long time to greet us after we sat down. Then he took awhile to get our waters to the table. But once he realized how long he was taking he said, "Sorry about the wait. Dessert's on me tonight." Our faces lit up and we knew everything would be ok. After the rough start, the service for the rest of the night was excellent....and so was the food. I got the barbeque spiced sea scallops with charred corn-pepperjack blue grits and Austin Amber butter sauce (pictured below). The scallops were cooked perfectly and literally melted in my mouth. Delicious. B got the ribs (pictured above) and they did not disappoint. Perfect. We also shared a side of aged gouda-ham mac n cheese. Sublime. We ended the meal with the Vanilla "Dessert Toast" a la mode with candied pecans and bananas. It was like French toast with vanilla ice cream, pecans, and bananas. It wasn't my first choice, but it's their most popular dessert so we decided to try it. It was wonderful. Seriously, we had a great meal at Jasper's and can't wait to go back already. I just really liked the menu because it wasn't your traditional fancy menu. It was fancy Southern, hearty food....and it was delicious.

On our last day, we woke up late and then went to the mall to do some shopping. I had birthday gifts to buy and B needed new black shoes for work. I know it doesn't sound like it was exciting to go to the mall, but it was exciting for US to go shopping WITHOUT our children. It's such a different experience. You're not busy making sure your children are next to you and you actually don't lose your train of thought ("What did I need from this store again?"). It's quite amazing. We had also gone to IKEA during the weekend and it was so different without our kids. I actually saw things in the store that I had never noticed before. The reality is, our kids are pretty well-behaved in the grand scheme of things, but kids are kids and they still interfere with some good, relaxing shopping time.

So that was our weekend. Not quite as exciting as our previous Austin babymoon when we went on the Duck Tours and went to see the bats, but it was exciting enough for us. We did some window shopping, bought a much-needed lint brush, ate GREAT food, got a decent amount of sleep, and even watched one movie. And even though we didn't finish the movie together (and we didn't take many pictures at all), we still chalked this up as a wonderful babymoon.