{"id":2467,"date":"2011-01-02T16:06:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T02:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2011-01-22T22:00:27","modified_gmt":"2011-01-23T08:00:27","slug":"christmas-2010-austin-1231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/?p=2467","title":{"rendered":"Christmas 2010 Austin &#8211; New Year&#8217;s Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We were flying out on New Year&#8217;s day, so this was our last day in Austin. Sonja was up late the night before dealing with a blog crisis for her customers, so we slept in more than usual. We didn&#8217;t plan any activities so we went for a nice walk at the Walnut Creek park just down the street. It&#8217;s a beautiful forest area with lots of trails and creeks.<\/p>\n<p>Leilani and I (Andy) wanted to show Sonja this waterfall we saw 2 days before. Then there was a ribbon of water flowing over the large flat rock and into the pool below. Now it was dry. But Leilani could still throw rocks into the pool:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-before-throw.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-big-splash.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>She carried bigger and bigger rocks and threw dozens of them&#8211;sometimes I feel bad because she&#8217;s contributing to erosion and filling the pool with rocks. And it was a pretty pool that reflected the forest:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-unstill-water.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>We hiked for a while on the maze of paths, trying to find the river crossing. At one point, an off-leash pit-bull prompted Sonja to pick up Leilani. So this was a rare (and short) ride on Mommy&#8217;s shoulders:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-carry-me.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><\/p>\n<p>For some reason, this picture reminds me of <a target=\"_new\" href=\"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/?p=173#Leilani\">one 4 years earlier<\/a> in the same area. Maybe it&#8217;s the tights:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-stick.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><\/p>\n<p>A pretty dry creek-bed:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-dry.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-sl.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The point of the hike was a big playground for Leilani. But she got upset over the wrong kind of monkey bars and didn&#8217;t have that much fun. She did play a little before it started getting cold and late.<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-play.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-slide.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><\/p>\n<p>On the way home, we took a different path. The stream was difficult to cross here, Andy carried Leilani, David got a foot wet, and Sonja went barefoot. Later, Leilani wanted to play on the crossing stones, but broke her stick and had a melt-down.<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-dead-end.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>More of Andy&#8217;s art:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-pole.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/101231-wcw-stump.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Back at the house, Grandma&#8217;s Christmas decorations:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/01231-lda-family-outside.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>After making the Princess bags with Grandma and decorating them, Leilani insisted on filling them with goodies (chocolates) and giving them to people.<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/01231-lda-bags.jpg' height=\"600\" width=\"450\"\/><\/p>\n<p>While Mommy and Daddy packed the suitcases, Leilani worked on her biggest puzzle yet. Actually, it&#8217;s not her puzzle, and she did have some help, but they finished it that night. Like I wrote earlier, Leilani is patient and matches colors and shapes very well to pick out the right pieces to put in:<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/01231-lda-puzzle.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/01231-lda-puzzle1.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Sunrise 1\/1\/11 (from the airport for our 8am flight home&#8211;tickets are cheaper on this flight):<br \/>\n<img src='http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/images2\/6\/1\/web\/01231-lda-new-morning.jpg' height=\"450\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were flying out on New Year&#8217;s day, so this was our last day in Austin. Sonja was up late the night before dealing with a blog crisis for her customers, so we slept in more than usual. We didn&#8217;t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2858,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}