Ummmm... where to start?

I'm here in Austin, I've been here for a week now. I arrived with a horrible cold, which is just now in the final stages (damn this lingering cough!). I've gone downtown to try to see the bats fly (it got too dark and they were not cooperating!). My nephew, Van, turned 5 and had an awesome super hero themed birthday party. Van is the one on the left:

(picture taken by birthday boy's talented mom, Tiffany)

Jinx attacked Rio twice the other day... viciously attacked... as in, "I want to rip you apart" attacked! Things have seemed fine since, but it makes me very concerned about Jinx's personality. Will have to watch him closely.

OMG... let me tell you about my drive down from Boise:

It started with a rainy morning. Carrie, my good friend and traveling companion, and I got loaded up and were on our way by about 10:00 a.m. Our drive was pretty boring, only stopping at rest stops, where I would freeze my tush off while letting the dogs out to do their business, getting drenched the entire time. The rain was not letting up. At one point one of my windshield wipers came loose and I had to ask a helpful man to put it back together for me.

Oh well, rain... it's not helping us have a fun trip with stops & sights, but it's not that bad. Then came night time... and Wyoming...  it started blizzarding. No joke. I could barely see anything in front of us due to the sideways blowing snow in my headlights. We were going between 25 - 35 mph on the interstate. We passed through a town called Rock Springs, WY and were still trying to make it as far as we could that night when we realized it was just not working. Point of Rocks, WY was coming up next and there was "lodging" on the sign for that exit. We decided to stay there for the night, even though we JUST entered Wyoming and were supposed to be clear on the East side of the state by the time we stopped for the night. With the horrible rain and then this, we had not made it anywhere near as far as we were supposed to.

We pulled off at Point of Rocks and stopped at this bar or something to ask where the lodging is. Turns out, that motel has been completely shut down (THAT would be a good thing to know instead of the exit sign proclaiming: "LODGING"!). It had taken us more than an hour to get from Rock Srings to Point of Rocks... we were going to have to drive all the way back, blindly, slowly... ugh! But, we did. Mostly on a back service road, which I'm not convinced was SAFER, but we made it. We found a cute little motel in town and stayed for the night.

The next morning we woke to this:

It was OCTOBER 5TH! Did anyone tell Mother Nature that it was still fall?? It didn't take us long that morning to get back to Point of Rocks... about 20 minutes when it was over an hour the night before! It also wasn't long before we got out of the snow. We did, however, have pouring rain all day and then again all night. Another day of slow going. We realized that we were not going to get there on schedule. To make matters worse, the morning of the snow Carrie woke up with a sore throat. She spent the rest of the trip sick sick sick... and I rode in a car with her for 4 days with the windows rolled up, so I got sick too. By the time we arrived in Austin we were two sick and tired girls!  Day three we made great time, the roads were finally dry (YAY!).

We made it to within about 3 hours of Austin, a little bit past Dallas. We were so ready to be there, but didn't want to arrive in the middle of the night, so we just stopped for an early night to get some rest and arrive on Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday night Carrie & I went out to dinner with MY FAMILY! Yay, we finally made it to Austin and had one little outing in our sick induced stupor.

(Harlan & Van... don't fall in!)

So, here I am. One week later. Getting over the tail end of this nasty cold. Tomorrow is Friday and then on Saturday night we're going to the Broken Spoke to see my brother's band, The Derailers, play in their hometown. I can't wait!