Living the Texas Dream Part 2

I just have to show you pictures of my morning running spot. We have a park just around the corner and it's huge. It's about 1 1/4 mile to circle it, so it makes for a good morning jog. It's beautiful! Normally it's filled to the brim with little India, so it's strange to see it without anyone there. It really is beautiful!

Alrighty, back to our vacation with Uncle Jason. Monday we FINALLY went SWIMMING! FINALLY! It was something we had been aiming to do, but we were always too lazy to get going. Monday morning was the day. 

                                       

We woke up, blew up the kids' floaties, walked over to the pool and....it was closed. HA! Go figure. 

                                      

We had to wait for about 4 more hours until we could go. Since I promised Claire swimming, this is what we gave her in the meantime: bathtub "swimming".

                                      

We finally got to the pool and had a great time. I think Jason and I had more fun crashing the kids into each other than they did. Jared was a little underwhelming in the pool and didn't splash as much as I thought he would, but Claire was having a blast in her airplane and car.

 Our swimming was cut short because stupid mom thought it was a good idea for an alligator (my hand) to touch her leg. I mean, why not? We had fishies and ducks that already got her legs, but an alligator? Of course that's more real that ducks and fishies. She f.r.e.a.k.e.d. out. The second I said alligator and she felt the tip of my finger, she was hysterical. Screaming, jumping out of her floaty, literally climbing to the top of my head. We got out of the water and she was rigid with fear. So sad, but Jason and I were still chuckling. What were we to do now? I explained for quite some time that it was my hand, we scanned the water, made her go back in, which she hated. We ended up going home and ended up having alligators in our house two days later with the same sort of reaction. This time it was from a squeaky noise from the air mattress she was sitting on. Luckily, I taught her to say "boo alligator" and they run away. Also, She is scared of my "alligator hand" and looks at it very cautiously.

Tuesday was super fun. We met Brian for lunch at the famous Sonny Bryans. I don't know what it is about BBQ, but apparently it's better if it looks like they got it out of the trash. This place was soooo......terrifyingly ghetto. Really....here's a picture....

Yes, that is where you eat. It's worse in person....can you even believe that? We ate outside on their picnic table. That being said, if you're in Dallas, go to Sonny Bryan's and get the ribs. They were out of this world amazing. Go there for the ribs and to Rudy's for the brisket and you'll be in heaven. 

Jason and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art and I was very impressed! We spent a couple of hours there and just skimmed the surface. I wish we could have done more, but two kids in an art museum....you know how that goes. Brian and I are going to go back this weekend and see this: 

The Discobolos. It has never before been in America and I am terribly excited to go! I'll take a picture for everyone to see. It'll be as if you are there. :)

Jason left on Wednesday, the 19th, and I was very sad to see him go. We had such a great time and I loved having him around to hang out with. I was determined to show him how healthy I've gotten, but all we did was eat desserts and load up on ice cream and oreos. Seriously. Maybe the 2 salads he had for lunch really stayed with him.... :) I'm so glad he came to visit! It was too short. 

And he LOVED Sherlock! Success!

I really should do this in three parts, but i'm not. Here:

LIVING THE TEXAS DREAM PART 3

There's your heading. Our little family headed out for a day in Fair Park on Saturday. It was pretty darn hot, but a really nice day. We decided to do the Children's Aquarium first and go from there. When we first walked in, it was a little underwhelming and small, but turned out to be well worth it. 

The kids loved the huge fish and sharks. Seriously, it was awesome. Their sharks were huge and impressive, so it kinda made our day as well.

Stingrays

The most enormous lion fish we have ever seen! They were gigantic!

You can't really tell here, but Jared was just about as big as that fish in the tank. 

That cool cement weirdness in the background is part of the park. It's a walkway and you can walk all over it in a little shady area. It looks like a tongue (not in this picture)....at least I think so. 

Swan lake. You can ride these swan paddleboats around the lake.

Next we went to the Natural History museum. It was super old school. A taxidermist paradise. Very cool to see how far we've come as far as museums go. That's about it. Afterwards, we went to the Butterfly Exhibit. They have 7.5 acres of gardens and a butterfly house. Beautiful gardens, but it was more worth the time to go into the butterfly house.

Claire is chirping with the birds.

Dirt and boys....

Brian made fun of me for taking a picture of mating butterflies, but they were easiest to get because they didn't fly away. 

I chased this one for quite some time before I finally got it! I've never seen a green and black butterfly, so I had to get it!

Atlas moth. This was easily bigger than my hand.

We had a great time together and really enjoyed Fair Park. We'll have to go back and do the rest of it sometime. Claire is still talking about the baby froggy she saw. It must have been cute. 

Since then we have gone to the pool with our cousins and had SO MUCH FUN! We've also started another attempt at potty training. I'm trying to go cold turkey from diapers, so we'll see how this goes. It's really nice to have wood flooring for that reason, but I do kinda miss my vacuum. :)