Last week, we visited some good friends in Austin, Texas. We had so much fun and really are so grateful to Jared, Laura and Cali for their wonderful hospitality. They made excellent tour guides. We visited San Antonio, where we saw the Alamo and the Riverwalk. We had lunch at the restaraunt that was first on the Riverwalk and took an excellent boat tour.

The next day, Laura and I did a little shopping while the men watched the girls. Laura knows of this great second-hand shop – so much fun. I got a carrier (among many other things) that Beth just loves. It really comes in handy! Later that day, Jared and Laura took us up to Mount Bonnell, which has gorgeous views of the city. We also visited a park that had some huge stone cows. Perfect for climbing on. And right next to the park was an Amy’s ice cream shop. They had a dairy-free, soy-free coconut stuff that sooooo delicious!

Then, the next day, we had lunch at EZ’s (best chicken sandwich ever), followed by visiting some great museums. The LBJ presidential library is on the UT campus, and is quite interesting. I really loved the Texas Natural Science Center, which is also on campus. They had some really cool fossils, Noah caught a huge fish and found the skeleton of his ancestors (see the giant ground sloth on the right – yes he is sleeping in this morning ).

We had a great time in Texas. A vacation definitely worth being thankful for. Hope all of you out there have lots to be thankful for, too. Happy Thanksgiving!

So, what did we do for Halloween?

I was “Booed” by someone in my mom’s group, and I passed on this bag of goodies. It was fun to get to shop like this for someone else.

Beth dressed up as a piece of candycorn. I was very pleased that I managed to come up with this on my own. No pattern. No inspiring costume. I thought to myself, “What is the shape of a sleepsack? Candycorn! Noah loves candycorn. It’s perfect!”

We did a bit of reverse trick-or-treating. I made a huge batch of pumpkin pie spice popcorn (sugar + pumpkin pie spice + pam spray on popcorn), mixed it with toffee nuts, pretzels and M&Ms and put it in some decorated lunch bags. It was lots of fun spending the afternoon as a family visiting our friends with goodies. Plus I got to show off Beth all dressed up and super cute

Back at home, we hung out on our front porch and handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. Lots and lots of neighborhood kids. Then we partcipated in a little neighborhood tradition we cal “Trick-or-Beer.” Delicious

We went camping with some friends a while back. We had 3 tents on a campsite. One couple coordinated meals (thank you, thank you!) and the rest of us brought what was asked of us. A couple more families joined us for dinner on Saturday night.

It was a blast

The other day, I visited the library and in the lobby were a flat of free apples!

I ran them through my apple peeler/corer and froze the pieces on some cookie sheets. Now I have 3 ziplock bags of apples.

The question is, what shall I make with all of them?

Yesterday we went out for breakfast after the race. There were delicious-looking cinnamon rolls. Of course, I could not eat them. In fact, I have not eaten much in the way of frosted baked goods since Beth came along. So this morning, I set out to make dairy-free/soy-free frosting and sweet biscuits.

Now it is hard to tell if these were really as good as I perceived them to be or if I simply wanted frosting so badly that any imposter would do. Either way, I found them to be scrumptious! For any who might now – or at some future point – need to make dairy-free/soy-free sweet biscuits and frosting…

I think this frosting could easily be changed around to create other flavors using cocoa powder or flavor extracts. It’s fairly thick, so I also think it may work well for using in pastry bags around holidays. All in all it got our morning off to a great beginning. Hope your Sunday is just as sweet!