texas hill country.

ha. texas hills. that's an oxymoron if i ever heard one. anyway. mom, tim, grandma, granddad and i all piled in the rental car to head out to texas hill country to take a tour of the texas wineries.

the first stop was texas hills vineyards. tim and grandma sampled their wines and bought some to take home, as well.

we also got to be squeezed like grapes!

after a quick stop for lunch at the silver k cafe, we drove onward to william & chris vineyards. i tried the wines here, but i'm a novice wine drinker {so far i only like sweet wines} so the wines at william & chris didn't appeal to me much. but the building is an old farmhouse, it was cute as can be, but i failed to get a picture of the outside. so check out their website to see it.

moving on, we stopped at pedernales cellars. they were even having their annual grape stomp, but i couldn't get anyone to go stomp grapes with me. :( but i did find a little lizard friend. and check out how ridiculously beautiful the skies are. and texas has some pretty cool looking trees.

becker vineyards was next on our tour. mom really liked their tree logo they had on their building, glasses and bottles. and i found a little kitty friend at this winery.

next up was grape creek vineyards. and i feel like i should note that i saw no creek. the san antonio area had not seen a drop of rain in over six months and have had no "significant" amount of rain in over a year. can you imagine? needless to say, the creek must have dried up.

the last winery we visited was sister creek vineyards. located in an old cotton mill, the setting here was really cool. and we got there just in time before they closed up for the day.

we also saw some other cool things along our trip through hill country. like camels. and zebras!

and we even drove through luckenbach, texas. you know, like the song...

...where we missed a great opportunity to ride a cow. yeah, longhorn cattle with saddles. true story. we really missed out.

deep in the heart of texas.

after christopher's ceremony in kingsville, all the family drove up to san antonio for a few tourist-y things.

first, we visited the number one tourist destination in texas, the alamo.

after the little history lesson, we headed down to the number two tourist destination in texas, the san antonio riverwalk. although it was a scorching hot day we saw some pretty sights. i even found alphie!

along the way, we stopped in some of the shops and restaurants alongside the riverwalk. grandma, granddad, mom and i took the riverboat tour and learned some really cool stuff about the history of the riverwalk and the buildings along it.

all in all, i'm pretty sure we walked at least thirty miles over the three days we spent in san antonio. thirty miles. for real.

but that's ok. that helped burn off the calories from the red velvet cake cheesecake i got for dessert at the cheesecake factory one night. or at least 1/3 of them. maybe.

kitchen adventures.

so not too long ago i told you all about austin's pickling adventure, but we've been working on some other things in the kitchen recently, too.

first, we used this stuff, quinoa, to make some burgers.

once cooked in the rice cooker, it looks like this:

then we added some onions, carrots, cheeses, and spices to get this "burger" mixture.

and the quinoa apparently breaks apart to look like worms, kinda gross looking.

anyway, we formed them into burgers, cooked 'em up and here's what we ended up with.

and while they weren't gross, they weren't super either. kinda just tasted like bland rice on a bun. not one to make again but it was fun to try a new recipe.

and back in the canning department, we made some salsa!

the only veggies in the salsa that are from our garden are the peppers, we didn't have enough tomatoes to use our own... but still--it's homemade salsa!

austin also decided to go ahead and use those leftover cucumbers to make even more pickles. yuck. but hey, at least we shouldn't have to buy pickles for a few months!

hey girl heyyy.

juliet just wanted to call to say heyyyy.

i'm a nerd.

yeah, i said it. i'm a nerd. know why? because i love school supplies with every fiber of my being. of course, if they are cute or hello kitty school supplies, even better.

here's my stash so far.

a new planner, lots of pens {some of which i got for free with coupons!}, highlighters, post-its and a hk computer sleeve. oh yeah, and i am currently blogging for the first time on my brand new laptop computer! woop woop!

i'm not joking when i say i'm a nerd. i even get ridiculously excited about textbooks.

muscle testing, electrotherapy and medical dictionary--who wouldn't be excited about that? i'm also super pumped about the photography class. for the first time ever i ordered my books online. i've only gotten about half of them so far, so i'm anxiously awaiting the ups man's visit.

lucky me, miss lindsy came into town this weekend and met up with austin and me and our friends tyler and bryan at buffalo wild wings for the ufc fight {yeah, we go watch people beat up other people, whatever}. and i miss her, so this is very exciting.

buuut, as if this wasn't exciting enough, she brought me a back to school present from her and rar jay! all piled in a cute bag, too.

it's good stuff, too. everything i need for class.

an hk notebook, hk accordian file, hk hand sanitizing wipes, and hk duck tape {who knew they even made that?}. oh, and for my lunch, pirate themed sandwich bags, of course. my friends are awesome.

and now, on a completely random and unrelated note...

it rained the other day. a lot. and austin and i came upon this little flood as we were trying to get to the bank {i did a little zoom action for you, too}.

don't worry, we took an alternate route.

i warned you it was going to be random...