Austin...beyond city limits

This is a heavy-laden picture post. They can be clicked on to embiggen.

Anyone a Texas A&M fan?
If so, then you'll recognize this cutie from one of the Texas Cracker Barrels...Revelry, the mascot for Texas A&M. One must have a collie mascot to mirror our Tawny and to celebrate Blake's attendance there!
Here's daughter Beth with Cricket the Boston Terrier and Queenie the Kelpie. Such sweeties! And Beth motored Blake, Shelby, Russ and I around Austin to go Shepler's shopping, mall shopping, yarn shopping, coffee drinking and all that good stuff.

Yarn...did I say yarn?

We stopped at The Knitting Nest....one I had read about on Ravelry and on Franklin's blog. They were carrying in a birthday cake for Hank...it was March First, his First Birthday! Russ enjoyed Franklin's drawings on the wall as he had met Franklin several years ago at Camp 2.0.
They have a wonderful selection of Cascade 220 and since I'm planning to use it for several future projects, I had fun walking back and forth holding hanks up against one another for color combinations. And what do we have in the bag with the Cascade 220? A starbuck's 'sweater mug'! We were a little early to the shop and there was a Starbuck's a block away....perfect timing to get one of the Stabuck's mugs that knitters are talking about before all the mugs were gone! The mugs were on clearance, too! It is curious that the knitting and the cables are upside down...




Hank.





Have you ever seen such beautiful mesquite and pecan? This is just a tiny portion of the trees Thomas cut out of the pasture. They are being used right now for grilling in the smoker. What a wonderful fragrance met us when we returned from shopping to have Thomas stoking the smoker with mesquite for a terrific dinner.



Near the smoker was this friendly fella, Pete the Bloodhound. That's a four foot fence he's standing on.



Can you tell Shelby is really happy to be trying on clothes at her favorite store, Abercrombie & Fitch? She loves the perfumed air. The photos aren't bad, either. And the clothes on sale were a bonus.



Here's Cricket again, happy as can be to have her family back from shopping. Her tongue is just like that....

Thomas, Beth's husband, is the best outdoor cook. He's a mighty good ranch manager, too.
We are so pleased he could take a bit of time with us. "The Girls" cooperated in their calving.

This is far from the best picture of Blake, but better than the first try!!! He's our A&M guy who's doing very well his first year there, for which we're very proud.

Thank you Beth and family for the fun visit.