Joe and I decided to take our last road trip through TX without a wee one in tow.  We decided to make it a foodie trip through the heart of TX barbeque and then down to San Antonio to visit Joe's aunt, uncle and cousins and to finally visit the other Missions (the Alamo being the most famous). We started and ended the trip in West, Texas- that's "West 'comma' Texas" for some kolaches.  On Friday when we headed out, the Village Bakery was open and their kolaches are better than the ones at the Czech stop on the highway.  Of course, that didn't stop me from buying (and eating almost all) nearly a dozen kolaches from the Czech stop on the way home Sunday afternoon.

Of course we tried to sample as much of the best TX barbeque that we could fit into our stomachs in one morning and I reached out to my twitter foodie friends for recommendations of what to eat and where and we were not disappointed. Below is my picture blog of the trip!

We started our meat tour in Luling, TX at City Market. A dinky/divey little convenience store with a barbeque pit stuck in the middle of it.  For 9:30am (they open the pit at 8am) it was quite packed full of people. It was so dark (and a bit intimidatingly compact) inside the pit room that between the low light and the pungent smoke, I didn't bother to take the camera out. The ribs were boring, but the brisket was scrumptious, a nice crispy outside and a juicy inside. The sausage was great, too! Can't put my finger on why I liked this one best, but it was tasty :)  A nice meaty breakfast to start off the day!

Next up, Lockhart's- the official barbeque capital of Texas.  There are 4 notable places to eat in Lockhart's, but will limited stomach capacity, especially for me and my ever growing uterus pushing up my stomach, we decided to pick two places for our second breakfast and then lunch.

 

First up, Smitty's Market. This place was cool and I took a lot of pictures, more than even the ones I've posted here.  The people running the place as well as what looked to be the regulars were in there with us at 10:30-11am for what was our second breakfast. The pit master was a bit shy, but he let me shoot a bunch of cool pictures in the pit room.  The market side had cool communal tables and I wish I could have taken pictures of all the fun families and friends that had gathered in there on that Saturday morning.  They were all having such a good time! The ribs were amazing and the brisket was good, as was the sausage.  Definitely the best ribs of the trip!

 

And for lunch, we headed to Kreuz Market. Unlike Smitty's, this is a modern building so picture taking wasn't as much fun.  But the little old lady running the one pit was pretty cool. At this point, we were getting a bit full of meat. It was suggested for us to get their chops, brisket and suasage. The local barbque place in Dallas sells Kreuz sausage, which I've had a bunch of times, so being super full, we skipped the sausage for lunch.  The chops were very moist- was is fat or brine?  Hard to tell. And the brisket or clod, not sure what we ordered, was quite fatty.  Still tasty.  All in all, I definitely had no need to eat the rest of the day after this trip!

 

 

We then headed down to San Antonio the check out the Missions.  Everybody knows the Alamo, but there are 4 other Missions that still stand on beautiful grounds just south of the city.  We first stopped at Mission San Juan, but it's under construction, so pictures of the church are ugly and I'll eventually put pictures of the grounds up on flickr.  Next up, Mission Espada, with Joe checking out the aqueduct, the mission and one of the beautiful flowers out front.

And lastly, Mission San Jose.  At this point, I was hot, somewhat sunburned, sweating to death, but considering it was a 'cool' Texas day I trudged along the grounds hopping from shady spot to shady spot.  It took a while to get a shot of the church as there was a wedding going on inside and late comers were trickling in as well as the normal tourists milling about to check out the stonework around the door.  Very beautiful.

Upon arriving at our hotel, Joe and I cooled down after being outside for a while and headed to the Cove for the best burger in San Antonio according to Texas Monthly Magazine circa 2009.  It was okay- definitely not a fan of refried beans, so I only tried a bite of Joe's burger. The Cove was a cool place.  Definitely wish there were more places like it around pretentious Dallas.

On Sunday, we headed over to Joe's cousin Eric's house to meet up with his family as well as Joe's Aunt Patsy and Uncle Larry.  We had some tex-mex for breakfast and then started our 5 hour trip back up to the Big D.

Week 32

Third time's a charm!!  The doctor sent me back in for some measurements of the baby and this time we requested a profile view of the baby from the doctor doing the ultrasound.  She said that she'd do her best as long as the baby cooperated and it did, enough, so that we can see it's enourmous Joe-sized noggin with it's hands in front of it's face.  Strangely, as last time, the doctor printed out a picture of the femur.... not sure why we've gotten pictures of a femur at both appointments.  At least we finally have a cute profile picture!

Joe and I flew home for our Pennsylvania baby shower in Pittsburgh.  It was nice to be back in 'chilly' PA, with a seasonably comfortable 50 degrees- a nice change from the Texas heat.  I swear that on Saturday morning there was some freezing rain when we left for the Strip District- which is almost like snow!

Here are some pictures of Joe and I opening pictures at the shower, plus me and some of the Saccos.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures with the Rutkowski's on my camera, so we'll have to get some from Joe's mom at some point.

-The cute diaper cake my mom made

-Lisa, Madeline and the belly

-Me and my mom

-Me and Grandma

-Grandma, me & my dad

-Me, my cousin Brooke, my dad, Grandma & Aunt Patty

We had a busy couple weeks between Easter and posting this as we have now moved from our 1 bedroom apartment (my favorite apartment, ever!) to a 2 bedroom apartment in the same building.  It's been a daunting task for Joe as I have been 'worthless' due to my 'condition' and he's been doing the bulk of the moving.  "Professional movers" came during the week and moved all of the furniture and thankfully, we were able to borrow a cart from Joe's lab that we would fill up with dishes, pots and pans, etc and then Joe would push down the loooooooooog (2.5 minute walk-long) hallway that sloped up on the way to the new apartment, of course. I moved what I could in our suitcases and I did move all of my clothes and shoes with the help of our friend Suzie- I trusted her to be gentle with all of my beautiful clothes that no longer fit.  I eyed them longingly as it will be months before I can wear them again.

It has also been weird moving into an apartment that looks 70% the same as the one we left. It's much more difficult for my brain to adjust to the slight changes than the big changes- yes, I'm still a geeky neuroscientist at heart. The second bedroom is a disaster area as everything got dumped in there so hopefully it will be ready for baby/my mom staying with us by the end of June, especially since we won't have much time over the next few weeks with the trip to PA taking up one whole weekend and the all-day baby preparedness class at Baylor Hospital.

 -The disaster of the spare room after moving

 

Once the apartment's more 'settled' I'll post more pictures. The baby's turning into a little monster and it moves around a lot! -but at least it's on a relative schedule of movement, I could set my watch to it's movements right now. The baby usually wakes me up around 4am- it is totally weird to be kicked awake from the inside out- and it's so scary when it doesn't wake me up and then you panic that maybe something's wrong, but it always starts moving again once I get up and about when I get out of bed around 6-6:30am. Sleeping's been difficult, but I think that also has to do with the stress of moving, getting ready for the trip to Pittsburgh and some crap at work.  Very hopeful that I'll be able to sleep better in a few weeks- the sleeping issues seem to come in waves.

And lastly, here are some more pictures from around our neighborhood, the Design District. And no, I didn't stuff a basketball up my dress, even though that's what it looks like!

Today, Jill and I drove down to Ennis, TX to drive the Bluebonnet trails. I had seen photos of these beautiful meadows full of bluebonnets somewhere in Texas, and now I know where they most likely were from. It was crazy that these farms and yards in Ennis are a sea of blue (with a pop of red from the indian paintbrushes) for acres upon acres. Thankfully, we did not see any snakes, but I did get chewed up by some fire ants and got all itchy after climbing into the bluebonnets for some of the shots. One of the locations on the Ennis tourism map was 'the big blue house'. We drove up to what we thought was the big blue house, set way off the road and parked in the front of the driveway to take some pictures. Of course, the tourism site also says not to trespass into people's yards and we weren't exactly sure if we were at the correct big blue house. We popped out of the car to take some pictures and of course, a pickup truck comes barreling down the long driveway. As Jill and I prepare to get an earful from the owner, we pop up from the patches of bluebonnets in the yard and walk over to the driveway as the dusty brown pickup pulls up with a 60+ year old man behind the wheel, passenger window rolled down and a rifle perched between him and the passenger seat.

man in truck: "You girls here to see some bluebonnets?"
me: "Yes, we are. Hi, I'm Carolyn." Eagerly eying up the rifle, I hope my introduction will at least increase the amount of time we have to dash to the car and delay getting shot at with his rifle.
man in truck: "Well, good thing, you found the bluebonnet man!"

Turns out, he has a nice scenic patch of bluebonnets behind the house near a pond and a lake that he lets people walk around for photos. Was a bit strange, but ended up being a nice place to take pictures without the throngs of tourists in the public areas. He even pointed out a spot along the road where we could find some white bluebonnets.

Below are the weekly pregnancy pictures. I'll need more time to process the flower photos (as I still haven't finished processing the ones from the arboretum), so I'll post those in the next few weeks.

For the last day of Joe's beard, and March, we went around the UTSW campus with Annabel and her awesome (and heavy) portrait lens for some couple pregnancy pictures. Some fun ones are below and the rest, and more normal looking photos, are on flickr- just click this link to the flicker set.