We spent one night of our trip in Fredericksburg and one night in San Antonio. In San Antonio we drove around the Riverwalk, Alamo Plaza, and Main Plaza to see the Christmas lights. (It's become an annual tradition for us. Normally we would have walked it, but it was super cold!) Then we saw an awesome light show.
We spent the next day in New Braunfels: at Landa Park, Historic Gruene, and with a pit stop at Rudy's on the way home to Austin:
Trying to sneak up on the squirrels
Gruene (pronounced Green) was also a German settlement, but now it has a bunch of antique and specialty shops. Some of the fun ones were Gruene with Envy, Gruene Eggs & Ham, Fickle Pickles, and Pookie Jane's.
We stopped in at this old dance hall with live music. Liz and Owen hated it (Owen wouldn't take his fingers out of his ears, and Liz actually started crying!?!), but Emily and Heidi had fun.
Fredericksburg was founded in the mid-1800s by Germans. We did a driving tour of the historic district. The kids were pretty bored out of their minds, but they had fun playing at the Marketplatz for a few minutes:
There was a skating rink set up. They stole some of the ice to have a snowball fight...
...William wasn't a fan.
We bought some fancy European chocolates:
And a sausage roll from the Old German Bakery:
And we checked out the historic library, where we read a few books and played with some toys:
Emily's birthday lunch: brisket and green chile mac & cheese:
Owen's preschool (two kids were out sick this week):
At Bass Pro for playgroup:
This play dirt stuff is really cool!
It snowed! Nearby Georgetown measured 0.1 inches, so that's probably a pretty accurate measurement of what we got here in Pflugerville, but the airport got over an inch. It was supposedly the first measurable snowfall in almost 7 years.
This little guy is so skinny that he can't seem to keep his pants up. It doesn't appear to bother him though.
Speaking of William, he has really taken off lately in his speech. He imitates everything he sees and hears. It's pretty cute:
