Christmas visit to Uncle Derek

After Christmas, we leaped onto a plane and jetted off to Austin, Texas to visit Uncle Derek. Well, not quite... Here's Taryn watching our plane (upper right) fly off:

We missed our flight by minutes and had to hang out in the airport until the next flight which had a stopover instead of being direct. The kids handled it like pros. They were perfectly behaved in the airport and on the airplane, although they were pretty happy to finally reach Uncle Derek's house in the evening. Grammy and Grandpa also flew in from Michigan so it was a nice gathering of family.

 One really cool thing about Uncle Derek's house is the untamed forest in his backyard! Practically every morning the kids went outside to hunt for treasures.

 Here's Uncle Derek giving us the tour of the woodlands and dried-up river bed behind his house.

Nia actually found a few fossils in the riverbed. Here's one small fossilized sea-creature -- possibly a mollusk of some sort?

 I found this beautiful rock covered with yellow/brown crystals. Still haven't conclusively identified it.

This particular area of Austin had many kid-friendly parks, museums and even a miniature train ride!

 Taryn was forever spoiled by all the attention she received from Grammy and Grandpa!

 We made the rounds at a couple of BBQ restaurants including Rudy's, "the worst Bar-B-Q in Texas".

 I don't think Grandpa and Grammy agreed!

 The kids posing by a giant mosaic butterfly at the nearby dinosaur museum.

 Nia's first official dig! She found something!

 ...meanwhile Taryn was quietly uncovering an entire dinosaur skull....

...then Grammy and the girls were eaten up by a very hungry-looking dino.

 Uncle Derek took us to an Italian eatery -- the kind where you smell the garlic halfway down the block. Excellent!

 He also took us on a hike the next day to walk off our noodles (pun intended!). We found this funny writing on a rock and took advantage of it!

 Austin's waterfall (effects of drought conditions obvious).

Then we visited the Whole Foods Mothership. They are going to open one in Fremont soon and I hope that it's as awesome as the Austin one -- the whole place is basically a huge, fru-fru restaurant!

 An outdoor Christmas lights show at the Mozart Cafe.

 Uncle Derek took us on a brief tour of University of Austin. They had this awesome galloping horses statue. I couldn't resist poking Taryn onto one -- she's been asking to go horesback riding for weeks now.

 Hanging out in Prof Derek's office! That hand-stick he's holding is a "spanking stick" from Taiwan that he uses for pointing.

 Another BBQ place!

 There was a huge dinosaur battle at the Children's Museum of Austin.

 Another visit to the park.

You can see in the photo below that Jeff was doling out the punches as fast as he could, but he still got knocked-out by Derek on the Wii boxing gane.

 Derek introduced us to Amy's ice-cream!

 ...and both kids tried out the cockpit on the ride home!