May 16, 2010 - Day Nine

We’ve recuperated from Deb’s party without any permanent ill lasting effects – hopefully!

Today we’re visiting our niece, Rebecca Chisholm who has lived in Austin, well actually Round Rock, for a number of years. She and her husband, Jamey, have two boys, five year old Jack, and one year old Ian. Last year they moved to a new house on a cul de sac in the ‘burbs.

Jamey was working so he wasn’t home, but our nephew, and her brother Adam, has lived in Austin since last fall attending the University of Texas graduate school. So this turned out to be a mini family reunion of sorts. We all saw each other last this past Labor Day when we were in Charlotte, NC for Rebecca and Adam’s sister, Janet’s wedding.

As with most new homes that I’ve seen in Texas, it’s a multi-story brick home, and it has a large fenced backyard for the kids to play in. It would be a perfect yard for a dog, but since Jamey is allergic to dogs, we brought both of ours. They mostly loved it. Coco loved it and was her usually friendly self, but Molly was skittish and would park at Jack whenever he moved faster than a snail. But Coco made up for it, she adopted Jack and stuck by him playing games – a boy and his dog.

Jamey is also a computer nerd by profession, so he has his fair share of computer toys. He has the new Apple iPad so I got a chance to look at with Adam, an engineer, giving me tips. It was fine, but I think I’ll stick with this little Acer Aspire One since it has features that I need on a computer: the ability to run real world programs like Microsoft Office and DeLorme Street Altas USA, three USB ports, a built-in camera, a large hard drive, and it can read all my memory cards. And best of all, it’s a whole lot cheaper than the Apple. But the iPad is still a neat toy, if I was still a working stiff, I’d probably blow the money to get one.

They also have the Wii gaming system. Marianne had never seen one, so Jack gave her a quick tour. Apparently Marianne is a natural at this since she beat Jack in her very first game playing the Wii version of ping pong; hopefully she quickly forgets her triumph.

Ian is just a little way from walking; he can pull himself up and crawl up the stairs. When that happens Rebecca is going to have to grow eyes in the back of her head!

Although it was close to Ian’s first birthday, we also brought a gift to Jack, a contraption that drops Mentos candies into a diet soda bottle to create a geyser. Since we had an engineer in the group, we let Adam set it up and make it erupt. It worked, but at $1.99 of a two liter bottle of diet soda, this could become a very expensive addiction. Funny, but expensive.

That evening after we got back, we left the dogs in the trailer for a little drive down to Lake Travis, about a mile past our campground. We saw a bunch more of the impressive Texas homes as well as yachts the ply the waves of this lake. Then we stumbled upon the young crowd’s hangout, Carlos & Charlie’s, a bar and restaurant that offers views of a marina, had a live band (also playing Sweet Home Alabama!), and was great for people watching. Marianne and I split a large order of babyback ribs which came with a mountain of French fries. The food was nothing to write home about, but it was good enough for this blog.