Weekend in Austin

David and I spent a wonderful weekend together in Austin. We ate great food, slept a lot, played many games of Scrabble, caught up on some much-missed reading time, and learned more about our great state of Texas! Here are a few highlights:

We took a very interesting tour of the Texas Capitol on Saturday morning. We really enjoyed our time there and learned many unique facts about Texas which I'm sure our faithful readers will enjoy, such as:

*the Texas capitol is taller than any captiol building in the nation, including our nation's capitol...everything really IS bigger in Texas!

*the emblems in the rotunda floor represent the six nations that have ruled Texas in its history: Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Conferedate States.

*the Texas government paid the contractor who built the capitol building with 3 million acres of land in the Texas panhandle.

*if Texas were its own nation, it would have the 11th largest economy in the world, ahead of nations such as South Korea, Australia, and Russia!

*the chandeliers in the House of Representatives and the Senate are in the shape of the Texas star and the letters T E X A S are in lights in between each point of the star.

*Sam Houston is the only governor of any state who was governor of 2 states: Tennessee and Texas. However, Houston did not want Texas to become its own nation, so he was "removed" from office before Texas' fight for independence. Here's Dave and Houston's marble sculpture:

*the star at the top of the rotunda looks very small from the ground, but it really is huge; the distance between each point on the star is 8 feet.


Here's a picture of me demonstrating my cowgirl abilties...good thing I chose a different profession!
Here's a picture of Dave with Davy Crockett, who was killed at the Alamo...remember?

This is Dave's favorite Texas flag as it represents "the spirit of Texas." (As they say, it's hard to be humble when you're a Texan.)

We spent many hours playing Scrabble; much to my chagrin, Dave won every game, although I was very close (one time!). :) This is our travel Scrabble game, which made quite an impression on the waitress at Souper Salad (where we played for 2 hours on Saturday afternoon). She was so impressed with our game that she was going to Target to buy her own as soon as she got off work!
As we wrap up this Thanksgiving season, we are very thankful for wonderful times together!