This weekend I went down to visit mom and dad since there was not a whole lot to do in Austin with Jill and Asher in Wyoming. The main task at hand was to fix up mom’s laptop which has gradually slowed down to molasses-like speeds. After a quick hard drive reformatting and 2 GB of RAM, it was up and running quite well.

On our way home from one of our errands, Dad and I decided to walk through the car show that is often held in the parking lot of Kroger. We saw a lot of great cars, though I had my hopes set high that I would see a classic Mini. Unfortunately, no one had brought one, though I did manage to grab a couple of quick photos of some nice cars.

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Now if I could only convince Jill to let me bring one of these home.

Sunday, as you can tell was quite a busy day. Between all the relatives in town, Kirk’s homecoming talk and family photos, we managed to squeeze in one more activity. Everyone gathered at the church house for a dinner and presentation of Marcia’s Young Woman Recognition award (or whatever it’s called).

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Jill’s mom put me in charge of taking photos, which I didn’t mind at all because she let me use the telephoto lens from her camera.

Because of all the family and relatives in town, it was decided the get everyone together for a large family photo. It happened with relative ease (pun intended) though at times we would get everyone together and realize that we were missing key people who turned out to be on the other side of the house.

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We ended up with a few usable photos where almost everyone was looking at the camera and smiling. If only we could get Asher to sit still...

Kirk has arrived home from his mission in Spain. Here’s a few shots from outside the church house on Sunday.

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In lieu of visiting Thermopolis, a natural hot spring about an hour north of Riverton where Jill’s parents live, we decided to hop over to the local swimming pool for some fun.

Between the diving boards, hot tub, sauna and wading pool, there was something for everyone to enjoy, and Asher tried to take advantage of it all, despite being chided by a cranky lifeguard for wanting to jump into a 100 degree hot tub.

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During our swim, Kishele and David showed up from relatively nearby Rexburg to come and enjoy the water with us.

As many of you know, Jill has spent the better part of May visiting her family at their new home in Wyoming. Her brother, Kirk has just returned home from his mission in Spain, so she figured she’d take Asher up and enjoy some well deserved time off.

My not-as-lax schedule allowed me to go and spend a long weekend with them and we had quite a bit of fun. Between hiking mountains, soaking in the hot tub and an amusing round of golf with her brothers, it turned out to be quite a nice weekend.

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This weekend I had the fortuity of running into two separate groups of out-of-towners. Lammo and Julie were in town for a training meeting for Julie’s work and Brigham and Mason were in town to look at houses to rent.

We had originally planned to either go tubing down the river or golfing, but because of the onslaught of torrential rain, neither plan really panned out, so instead we decided to head over to the UT Underground and bowl a few frames.

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I won in the end, though several have challenged my victory due to the fact that I enabled bumpers on my lane during the seventh frame. Go fig.

I’d like to think that I’m a trusting person by nature, but I’ve learned that if there is one person you can’t trust, it’s the weatherman. Without even a hint of rain in the forecast, it started down pouring this afternoon, though I can’t complain too much because the lawn really needed the water.

Asher couldn’t resist the urge to go out and play, so I quickly volunteered Jill to accompany him so I could stay inside and take photos of the fun.

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We did get some odd looks from the neighbors, however, because Asher insisted on hanging over the edge of the sidewalk and splashing in the rainwater as it ran down the side of the curb.

After a long and stressful week of finals, Jill decided that she needed to get out of town for a while, so we decided to head down to the San Antonio Temple for a while.

It had been a while since we’ve been able to go down by ourselves, so it was a great opportunity to go visit. We managed to get the last session available, which was lucky because the temple will be closed for the next two weeks for maintenance.

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I’ve been meaning to head out to the 360 Bridge in West Austin for a while to take some photos of what is probably one of the better sites in the city.

Because of time constraints, I ended up snagging this long-exposure shot at 12:30 a.m. (yes, that’s a half hour after midnight). The shutter was open for 6 minutes, allowing the camera to gather as much light as possible.

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It was a bit of a hike to the lookout spot, but it was relatively peaceful sitting up there overlooking the lake and looking at the stars.

As it turns out I was somewhat mistaken about the caliber of sports teams at Texas State. While I can still confidently claim that their football team doesn’t hold a candle to my alma mater Longhorngs, it just so happens that the Texas State baseball team is nationally ranked.

So in honor of this new-found knowledge (and in the pursuit of cheap entertainment) Jill and I took Asher to a Texas State baseball game.

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While the Bobcats ended up losing, we still felt like winners, given how much fun we had.