Around about Austin there’s a lot of stuff to do. We’ve tried to get out and see some of the city and have been somewhat successful. Austin is known for its live music scene and their motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” Well you can judge for yourself how weird you think Austin is, but we think it’s been kind of fun! There is a big mall called the Domain that is close to National Instruments. It’s kind of like the River Woods in Provo but bigger and a bit ritzier! A friend of mine from work invited us to go have frozen yogurt there, so we went and ended up exploring Borders Bookstore, running into a nice pseudo-religious multi-level marketing salesman, and just wandering around. We stopped for a photo-op.
One day, we explored the University of Texas at Austin. Our first stop was the LBJ Library and Museum. There was a pretty fountain out front. The museum was interesting. Adam liked the NASA stuff a lot. That was pretty cool. There was also a neat exhibit on Walter Cronkite that went through some of the work he did as a anchorman. (Btw, he coined the term “anchorman.” The anchorman is the last leg of a relay race, and Cronkite applied this to what he did.) As for the rest of the museum, though, Adam put it well–it reminded us of why we didn’t really like LBJ’s policies. There was far too much about how “wonderful” the “great society” movement was. There was a really cool 7/8 scale mock-up of the oval office in the museum that was fun to see.
After we went to the museum, we decided to explore UT’s campus. We took a self-guided tour using a guide we had printed out at home. There is a REALLY tall carillon bell tower there. They light the top part orange when UT wins a game.
Here’s proof that we were actually there. 
We wore our BYU attire into the Co-op store there where we were trying to find a small souvenir. It was a decent sized store but not as large as the BYU Bookstore by any means. There was some guy there that decided to follow us around and talk to us about Arizona for some reason. It was kind of creepy.
Anyway, we didn’t finish the tour because it was getting late, but it was enjoyable.
We are serving as ward missionaries here in the Walnut Creek Ward, and that brings us some pleasant opportunities. One day we got to babysit this cute little gal, Emily. Her mom, who has a baptismal date set (!!!), was having a getting-to-know-you interview with the bishop. Emily was super friendly and cuddled up to Sarah right away. It took her a tad longer–but not much–to warm up to Adam. We played hide and seek, coloring, throwing the dog, jumping off the couch, smash the spider, and pose for a picture. It was awesome.
There’s a neat tradition that Austin has. The city puts on a Broadway play every year in Zilker Park–for FREE. People grab their blankets, coolers, and card games and wait for the sun to go down. This year, the production was Annie. It was really well done! The lead had a voice that took a little getting used to, but we still enjoyed the show.
This last weekend we went to South Congress Bridge and saw the bats! …kind of. This was the best picture we got–and it’s of people. There were a lot of bats, but it was difficult to see them.
Anyway, those are a few of the adventures we’ve been on lately. We’ve liked it here in Austin, and there are many more things to do that we haven’t done. Some of the more popular ones usually involve an unkind beverage so we’ll avoid those, but we’d like to keep exploring!
We really like the movie “A More Perfect Union.” It’s really important to know about the founding of the country and what happened in the constitutional convention. Its not really associated directly with Independence Day because we’re technically celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but we figure it’s close enough. We’ll celebrate again on September 17th!
