Hotel Lag Liv

I love entertaining; my favorite thing about our new house is that we can have more people stay over at a time and I can have big dinner parties without making my guests eat on trays. This weekend one of my favorite sets of relatives - an aunt, uncle, and two teenage cousins, flew over from Atlanta to spend two days in "the greatest city in the greatest country in the world" (as JP calls it- often). My uncle is a pilot for a big airline so they can fly free when there are open seats on the plane, and it just so happened that there were a few open seats on an Austin flight late Friday night. The two girls fawned over the Landon, who greatly benefited from the amazing black-market teething gel my aunt brought from behind a pharmacy counter in Georgia. None of the girls had ever been to Austin so we made the most of their 36 hours here- even stopping downtown for a quick walk down 6th street on the way back from the airport Friday. On Saturday I made a big breakfast and then we all put our suits on and headed over to Barton Springs, a wonderful natural swimming pool in Zilker Park.

It is completely filled by a crystal-clear and very chilly natural spring that pumps 27 million gallons of water into the pool a day. Landon was not at all put off by the temperature and immediately tried to stick his face in the cold water. There was lots of splashing and giggles as he crawled around the smooth rocks at the pool's edge, and he was determined to jump off the big, old diving board but his mean mommy kept stopping him before he could impress the ladies with his diving moves.

At one point the five of us were standing around the diving board, debating whether or not we'd actually get in the water (it's seriously cold and this was before noon so it wasn't that hot out yet), when suddenly my aunt grabs my arm and says, "I think that's Matthew McConaughey!" And sure enough, it was! He lives nearby and had apparently gone for a jog and then a dip in the springs. Because I was the only one with a camera I was ordered to take inconspicuous pictures of him and here is one such shot:

My cousins, ages 15 and 17, were thrilled and immediately texted their entire phone book with the news. I was just happy to provide them with such a memorable first morning in Austin. The rest of the day involved some shopping, sight-seeing, and the eating of Tex-Mex for lunch and dinner. I gave my uncle my student spouse ticket so he could go to the U.T. football game and associated tailgates with JP. They stopped at the MBA one first and then moved on to the swimming letterman's party, where my uncle was thrilled to mingle with multiple Olympians recently returned from Beijing. The game was a blowout (52-7) so they left pretty early, stopping only to get more Tex-Mex on the drive home.

This morning we went out for breakfast, did a quick tour of the UT campus, and then dropped them off at the airport. JP went to study and I prepared myself for a day more screaming and crying (Landon doing the former, me the latter), but Landon was actually a fast-moving little bundle of smiles. We crawled all over the house - up and down the stairs - and into every room and closet, and every time I thought about bringing him down to his toys and giving my knees a break, I reminded myself that I was starting work Tuesday and I needed to take advantage of this time with him. So I did and we had a great time.

Tomorrow we're having a few of JP's business school buddies over for some sort of cookout, Tuesday starts the next step of our Fall Phase In, and then I think we're getting more overnight company next weekend. There's always something going on at the Hotel Lag Liv!