Our evening with Nick

Jackson and Karis are in preschool every Tuesday and Thursday, so we ran errands with Sabrina in and around Austin this morning. During breakfast, we mentioned rather offhanded to Jackson that we were leaving today to go to San Antonio for a few days. Oh my! His little face was SO sad. Grandpa Jones quickly assured him that we would see him Saturday at Sea World. Jackson looked skeptical, so Grandpa told him we were leaving our big suitcases in their sprare room and that we would have to come back to get them. Jackson liked hearing that and cheered up afterwards.

Twice a year when I am in Austin, Sabrina takes me to The Paper Place, where I purchase all of the card stock and envelopes I use to make cards all year. I love their selection of colors and textures, and I have loved having matching envelopes for the paper I choose. However, this year I have decided to give up the rather expensive matching envelopes (60 cents each) and just buy plain white ones in bulk ... this was a good decision because it allowed me to purchase a ton of really beautiful paper to use for card making ... people most usually just toss envelopes in the trash anyway. Sabrina also took us to the Gallerina to do some shopping ...
... it was raining this morning in Austin, which is where I took the picture of these beautiful flowers. We left Austin to drive back to San Antonio in the early afternoon and met Nick to have dinner. We drove downtown to the lovely Riverwalk and chose a restaurant on the river.

This is the first time I have ever been down here without little children along, and not to be down on little ones, it was much more relaxing without them! It's just that the walkways are right next to the water, much of it without guardrails, the crowds are so thick, and so you are constantly concerned about the very real possibility of a child falling in!

This is not a very good picture of Grandpa Jones and Nick, but it is the only one I took of them. Sorry guys ...

We ate a Joe's Crab Shack, which has yummy seafood. This was our view across the river from the restaurant.

San Antonio is a pretty place, and I love the riverwalk area. There is so much to see. It's a little early in the year for flowers ~ when we were here in the fall, there were SO many ... but if you know me at all, you know I love flowers and was very happy to see these!

There are little waterfalls, brick and stone archways, Spanish architecture, quaint cafe's, colorful and exotic birds, musicians serenading ... beautiful stores and gift shops ... with a very European feel to all of it ...

After dinner, we took the riverboat tour. It was getting dark, so my pictures are not very good. Plus, I can't remember all of the interesting information our guide was telling us about the river and the old buildings. He did a nice job, but I have an extremely poor memory. I think he said these five bells represent the five original missions in the area ...

This was our guide ~ Tim.

I do remember him saying that this cypress tree is thought to be the oldest one in Texas ...

This is the Tower of America ... we went to the top of it last October.

Nick sounds good and told us all about how his job is going at Chili's. He works a 5-day, 50-hour week. He says his training is going well. Tomorrow, we're going out to Kerrville with him. He's going to show us the Chili's he will be managing, as well as the area they will be moving to. There was a lot of severe weather through San Antonio yesterday, with a tornado touching down not far south from here ... but tomorrow's forecast is quite mild. I'm looking forward to the beautiful hill country. I'll try to show you some pictures of our day when I get the chance.