birthday marathon

In my world, birthdays are not just for one day. You get to celebrate birthday week! That's definitely what we did for Houston's birthday this year; he told me he's never had a birthday last that long! So...I'll start from the beginning. Get ready for a birthday marathon :)

Kicked off birthday week by going to the rodeo...again! I bought these tickets for houston's birthday before we got the free tickets, but it was fun because we got to do all the things we didn't do the first time we went. First we went and checked out the livestock show.

Houston here, with an enormous animal! The picture does not do it justice.

we got to watch the "milk man" he did a presentation on dairy farms and milking cows. It was actually pretty awesome.

my favorite part of the WHOLE livestock show! They had a birthing center. It had a bunch of animals who were about to have babies and then they had a bunch of brand new baby animals too. The piglets were just so dang cute!

I totally wanted to go in the petting zoo. H told me that was silly because I wasn't a little kid and he wouldn't go in there with me because he was wearing flip flops and he didn't want the goats to step on his feet. LAME if you ask me :) I really wanted to pet a llama. Oh well, maybe next year.

nothing out there like rodeo food. can you believe they had chicken fried bacon?? thats a heart attack on a plate! funny thing though, is two days before we saw this at the rodeo, we saw a show on the travel channel where a restaurant in texas made chicken fried bacon. We weren't brave enough to try it. We got some cowboy burritos and a funnel cake instead.

Keith Urban was AMAZING! So good. And man, he could rock out on that guitar!

Can you find Keith??
He was quite the entertainer too. The stage is a big round thing in the middle of the stadium. He proceeded to get off the stage and do an entire lap around the stadium, giving high fives to all the fans, while singing/playing the guitar, all at the same time. It was pretty impressive. He even climbed INTO the stands and sang surrounded by all these people. It was pretty awesome.

For H's actual birthday, we kicked it off with breakfast at the bagel shop with his mom and dad. We then went home and he got to open his presents. Houston can't ever wait to open his presents. He even tries to make me open my presents in the morning on my birthday - I like to savor the day and open them at night :) But I was ok with it this year because I got him something to wear for the BYU game.

After presents we went to 1905 Pizza Bar in Town Square to watch BYU play in the first round. It was so much fun and I loved the little restaurant. That took up most of the afternoon. We spent the rest of the day standing in line to get a Texas license (FINALLY after being here for almost a year) and going to Best Buy. Then we met a bunch of friends for birthday dinner at non other than Chilis.


After dinner we gathered round the old fire pit and roasted some good old marshmallows. Now thats my idea of a good birthday! I'm s'mores obsessed :)



Friday we loaded up the car and took a little road trip to San Antonio. Houston had never done the tourist-y things in San Antonio and I just thought that needed to be remedied quickly. We stayed in the Marriott Rivercenter. Our hotel was connected to the Rivercenter Mall, which was pretty awesome.

We took a boat tour of the Riverwalk.


We saw the Alamo.



I liked this church. St Josephs. It was in the middle of downtown and built by German settlers. They said that once a month they still hold mass in German.


Another church. San Fernando. This one was in the middle of one of the main squares/plazas downtown. They had a tejano band playing and tons of people sitting around the square, listening. Super fun.
We were walking back to our hotel when Houston saw this building. I don't remember what it was; some fine arts building maybe? But, he really liked the mural on the wall. He's really deep when he wants to be :) He told me the mural was about the unification of two cultures. Cool.

And the rest of our vacation was spent doing a lot of this...
watching March Madness! I just kept telling myself it didn't matter, he got to pick what he wanted to do for his birthday!

getting ready to go out for dinner at Mi Tierra. This restaurant is in the other main square of downtown called Market Square. I remembered going there all the time when I was little so I wanted to go back. It definitely didn't disappoint. The square was hoppin. It was like a mini carnival with music and food stands and tons and tons of people.
The restaurant definitely didn't disappoint either. The food was amazing, the decor was totally cool, and they had a mexican bakery. AHH, awesome childhood memories.

Saturday we met up with our friend Troy. He took us to this total hole in the wall for lunch. Best taqueria. It was so good. I ate way too much mexican food on the trip but it was totally worth it.

Then we went and saw another one of the San Antonio missions. This was San Juan. I think.



It was freezing cold that day. A cold front came in Friday night and we didn't bring any warm clothes. We may look ok but it was pretty darn miserable! That night we went to BJ's for dinner and to watch BYU play again, only this time they lost. Then I went back to the hotel while Houston and Troy went to Market Square again. It wasn't worth having my toes fall off from frost bite in my sandals, so I let the boys have their fun.

Sunday we drove home and had a little family birthday party and Houst's parents house.
Houston picked his traditional birthday meal of chicken fried steak and carrot cake for dessert.

Austin didn't want to eat dinner because he was so excited for cake.

Opening more presents. Houston's parents got him Ticket to Ride. So, Kevin and HolliJo - you have to come play with us now!

And that's the end of birthday week! Happy 27th birthday hubs!!