We spent the weekend relaxing at the lake in Maine with friends from high school. The weather was perfect on Friday and Saturday, hovering just below 80. Sunday was overcast and colder, but that was a nice break from the Texas heat.
Kel is in town this weekend and we did all sorts of fun things. On Friday night we went up to downtown Georgetown where they decorated a street like Diagon Alley and had activites until midnight for the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Amy and Justin participated in a tri-wizarding trivia tournament, but neither of them won.
On Saturday we went to see Charlie and Chocolate Factory at the Alamo Draft House. They had people dressed like oompa-loompas and they were sereving the meal that Violet tastes when she eats the chewing gum. None of us were brave enough to try it though.
So today we had by far our best fun day to date. We started out by going to the Cypress Valley Canopy Tours which was a brand new zip line adventure tour that this family started on their private land through a canopy of cypress trees. It was awesome and I would very highly recommend it to anyone who lives in or ever visits the Austin area. It was extremely fun but also incredibly hot since the tour was about 1.5 hours and it was over 100 degrees out. They have a man made lake with a zip line that you can ride into the lake but there has been so little rain that the lake wasn’t deep enough to zip into. So we drove down the street to the best Austin secret we have found so far. We went to swim at Krause Springs which was incredible. It’s an unbelievable swimming hole fed by two natural springs with water caves, beautiful waterfalls, and even a rope swing! It was perfect and I wanted to move in and just spend my days in an inflatable kayak floating under the waterfalls but eventually Jeff made me leave. We ended the fun day with a stop at Rosie’s Tamale House which is an unbelievably good authentic tex mex restaurant that we passed on our way home. All in all I couldn’t have asked for a better day or a better adventure partner to share it with!
Today we celebrated our fun day on Monday since it was the 4th of July. We were vacationing in LA for the weekend so we started out the day at Magic Mountain. We both agreed that our favorite rides were the Ninja and the Log Jammer. Then we decided to leave to go find some fireworks before we had to catch our red eye flight back to Austin. We had dinner at an Islands restaurant (awesome burgers!) and then went to see fireworks over the water at Marina Del Rey. Unfortunately it was kind of cloudy and cold in a city that is never supposed to be cloudy or cold but the fireworks were still great and it was a perfect ending to a fun fun day!
Today Aim and I got a picnic dinner from the fancy Whole Foods downtown and went up to Mount Bonnell to have dinner and watch the sun set. The hike wasn’t as long as we were expecting, but it was a really nice night and we enjoyed the view.
This morning Aim, Ollie, and I went down to the Texas Rowing Center for “Paddle with your Pooch”. We loaded up a double kayak with Aim in the front, Ollie in the middle, and me in the back. To our amazement Ollie was calm and seemed to have fun. She especially liked the swans and ducks in the lake 
Today we took Ollie down to Bull Creek to go swimming. We pretty much had to force her into the water and all she would do was swim straight for the shore. We were trying to get her comfortable with the water becase next week we’re planning on taking her kayaking on Lake Austin.
Today we went on our first Family Fun Day. Jeff, Ollie, and I went hiking in St. Edwards Park. The park was really pretty and we had fun looking at all the waterfalls and hiking along the stream. Ollie had fun wading in the stream and running along the trails pulling us as fast as possible.