Austin Day 2 – God answers prayers!

Today it’s just the kids and I. Huck wanted to come, but he has to get some work done.

After yesterday’s terrible navigation experience I’m not sure if I’ll have much luck getting us around. We tried to find a transit station thinking it might be best to take buses so I didn’t have to park the Beast in downtown. Huck said do NOT park in a garage – wise words considering past experiences I’ve had with tall vehicles and parking garages!

Street parking it was assumed would be super hard as well. I’m not great at parking this thing! But we spent about 20 minutes trying to find this transit station. We prayed, God if you want us to take the bus, help us find this place! Finally found the place, but couldn’t find a place to park and couldn’t see a sign of anyone I could talk to to get advice on getting around. We had wasted enough time, so off we went to the big city in the big Beast.

We prayed, God, please help us find parking! And voila! We found parking 2 blocks from the capital building – straight across from the entrance. Free parking! (the other side of the street was pay to park – this was literally an incredible find!) Parallel parking :/ Hmmm. Caden hopped out. Caden doesn’t know how to drive or park. He said I had enough room but he couldn’t really tell me what I needed to do to get in the spot. Oh it was one space btw, but luckily on the end so I had better leeway. And on a slight curve. I was pretty far from the curb, but not out in traffic, so it was considered a win!

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The Capital Building tour was very fun! The tour guide really liked the kids and she was so kind and interactive with them. Especially when she realized this was part of school for the day! She loved the idea of hands on learning and the idea of our trip. We learned quite a bit about government and Texas history.

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Next stop – LBJ Presidential Library for a little light reading. Oh we drove past the UT Football Stadium. The boys commented on how big it was. But we’re Broncos fans, what can I say.

I thought we would just kind of run through the library since we had already learned a lot about LBJ at his ranch. I was pleasantly surprised how much the kids liked it. We spent 1 1/2 – 2 hours there! We probably would have stayed longer but they really wanted to go play basketball and swim at the YMCA and I was trying to get us out of the city before rush hour.

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The YMCA – you can visit there for free the first day! YAY! The rest of the visit was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. The lady told us open swim wasn’t until 4. Boo. That would make timing bad, but oh well. Basketball first, then swim. Long story short – got our swim gear on then a life guard told us we couldn’t swim in the warmer kid area because of lessons. The other pool was all lap swimming. Hmmmm. Supervisor set her straight. We had a great time. Then hot tub time! or not. Kids under 13 can’t be in the hot tub – even with a parent. No kids period. boooo. But we needed to get going so at least I wasn’t the bad guy 🙂

Long story short, a wrong turn caused us an extra 15-20 minutes on the road. Sitting in traffic I smelled something, look over and ask Caden, “Is that smoke coming from us???” Yes it was. Not a lot, but, um, any smoke is bad. Drove a little further, seemed to stop, until we sat a long time. Called Huck, stopped at grocery, thought we were ok, but more smoke and still 20 min from home. Ugh. God please just let us make it back to camp, please! We did. Huck’s research points to a regen going on since we haven’t worked the engine hard the last 2 days. Please God, let that be the case. We have so much more of this great land to see and learn about!

One thought on “Austin Day 2 – God answers prayers!

  • February 12, 2016 at 4:07 pm
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    I would have done worse!!!! But good job!!!!

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