After a quiet January and February, we were all ready to get out of the house a bit more. That very first weekend in March, we discovered, was the last weekend we could take the kids to the circus. Apparently, we had waited too long to get tickets though and only the horrendously priced ones were left. After some discussions with the kids, we eventually decided to go to the Austin Aquarium instead.

Maya and Ian at the aquarium.

This place is maybe at its baseline an aquarium, but there’s more to it than that. They have  different kinds of birds and reptiles scattered throughout the place as well. They have animal encounters, a play area for smaller kids, a VR experience. They even host birthday parties. The kids love it there, but I don’t know. I worry about how well the animals are looked after and how tightly confined some of them seem to be.

I’m a sucker for experiences where I get to interact with animals though, particularly if I’m unlikely to do so any other way. Enter the ringtail lemur. This delightful little creature would wander back and forth across our laps, letting us pet its amazingly soft fur. The keeper would coax the creature along with a glassy red orb on a stick and the promise of some treats. Maya and Ian got to learn about how the animals are suffering for the loss of habitat. This always strikes a chord with conservationist Maya, and she expressed her anger at those people. The keeper did her best to present the other side of the story, for perspective – how people in poorer parts of the world will choose to feed and care for their families over protecting the habitat of a wild animal. I’m not sure Maya was having any of it, but it doesn’t hurt her to know that there isn’t always an easy answer or an obvious villain.

Ring-tailed lemur

After our lemur encounter, we wandered around looking at various birds and reptiles and aquatic creatures, purchasing food when we wanted to feed something. Maya had a lot of luck feeding seaweed to the fish in the large, open-topped tanks – they’d eat it right out of her hand. Ian was a little more hesitant, often letting go of his seaweed just as the fish got there. Another favorite was the little parakeet enclosure. We all had our little seed cups and the birds would just perch on our arms and nibble away. At one point, I had four of them lined up on my arm, not-so-graciously waiting to get at the seeds.

Parakeets!

We had burned through most of our tokens feeding animals, but we had just enough left for Sean to take the kids in to see and hopefully interact with a couple of the other resident lemurs – this time (we think) a red ruffed lemur and a black-and-white ruffed lemur. They were cute and bounced around their enclosure, but they weren’t terribly interested in interacting with the aquarium visitors. Ian got a few pets in, but I think by and large, it wasn’t as satisfying an experience as our earlier visit with the ringtail lemur.

“Stomp” noodles (aka udon noodles)

Spring break was smack dab in the middle of the month. Given all the COVID uncertainty earlier in the year, we had decided to save our vacation plans for the summer, and so the kids would have to entertain themselves for a week. The weekend before spring break, we tried to do some things with them. We made Japanese udon noodles from scratch. The cookbook I was working from had you kneading the noodle dough by walking on it (fear not, it was protected by multiple layers of plastic). The kids LOVED this part – they now refer to them always and forever as “stomp noodles.” Ian even found noodle stomping music – “We Came to Smash” by Martin Solveig (you can blame Sean for that one).

Maya’s birdhouse

We also painted the birdhouses and the stones that Lolli and Pop had sent for valentines day. The birdhouses in particular turned out really well. Each kid painted one, and we hung them up from the awning over our front porch. So far, I don’t think any birds have taken up residence, but the houses have little wind chimes hanging from them, and I hear them tinkling in the breeze now and then.

Ian’s birdhouse

The Friday before spring break, Maya’s class voted that she could take Wolfgang, the German class bear home for the whole week. Throughout the school year, the class would choose a kid take the bear home each weekend, I think based on who they believed had been well-behaved. He would be packed in a bag with a notebook into which the kids pasted photos of the bear having adventures. They’d write about what Wolfgang had been up to, using as much of their German vocabulary as they could.

Wolfgang seemed to enjoy soccer

Maya hadn’t gotten that bear all year, so she was elated that she could keep him for an entire week. He played soccer with us at the park on Monday evening. He tried to make friends with Lumos, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t trust the way he smelled. Sean and I took Wednesday afternoon off to hang out with the kids, and they (and Wolfgang) had lunch at Freddy’s, took a bird-watching hike at Mills Pond, and spent the rest of the afternoon playing at the arcade. I pointed out to Maya that one of the songs in her Suzuki piano book 2 was by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but she didn’t seem to think that had anything to do with her bear.

We had hastily planned an overnight trip up to Waco for the end of spring break, just as a mini-vacation, and Wolfgang came along for that too. We started our visit with lunch at a neat little restaurant called Cupp’s Drive Inn. The food was soooo good, and the people there were incredible friendly. After that, we stopped in at Waco Mammoth National Monument. We wandered around the grounds a bit, but the big draw here was the Dig Shelter.

Columbian mammoth fossils

Columbian mammoth fossils are being unearthed in this climate-controlled shelter. These guys were quite a bit larger than the more well-known woolly mammoth. Also, because the Columbian mammoths occupied warmer climates, they were also less, well, woolly than the woolly mammoths. In the dig shelter, in addition to male, female, and juvenile Columbian mammoths, we also saw fossilized bones of a saber toothed cat and a camel. It may sound a little dumb, but I thought it was kind of fun to tie something real to those goofy Ice Age movies that Maya and Ian enjoy so much.

Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco

After Mammoth, we drove into town to visit the Dr. Pepper Museum. Did you know Dr. Pepper was created in Waco, TX? The kids tolerated Sean and I trying to read the information throughout the museum, but let’s be honest, they were mostly there to sample the Dr. Pepper floats. The floats were delicious and we loved them, but I had also wanted to sign them up to create their own sodas. Alas, all the time slots were booked by the time I got around to checking. Word to the wise: book these time slots in advance.

After the Dr. Pepper museum, we went and checked into our hotel. Ian and Maya had been looking forward to a swim in the hotel pool, but we learned when we got there that it was really crowded. We had planned a distillery visit and dinner for after the pool, but we decided to do those first instead.

Ian and his mock-tail

Balcones Distillery has been making some of our favorite Texas spirits for years. We have never gone up to Waco to visit their tasting room, but we decided to do so today. Sean and I shared a whiskey flight (we tried the Lineage, the Mirador, and the Peated Sauternes), and followed that up with a couple of well-crafted cocktails. The kids enjoyed a couple rounds of mock-tails. They were particularly enamored with the lovely metal straws in their drinks. Ian, in true Ian fashion, ate all the mint leaves off the garnish in his virgin mojito.

Maya’s distillery hat

While we were there, Maya became obsessed with the idea of having a Balcones Distillery cap, and darned if she wasn’t just as cute as could be wearing that thing. So yeah, her souvenir from our Waco vacation was a cap from a distillery. For what it’s worth, we told her she couldn’t wear it to school. (We tried Maya’s hat out on Ian – also friggin’ cute.)

We had a place in mind for dinner, but found out that it was closed. Our backup plan wound up being a Cajun joint called Cajun Craft. Ian had fried crawfish, Maya had fried shrimp, and I can’t even remember what the grown ups ate, but it was deeelicious.

After all that, at long last, we finally made it back to the hotel so that Maya and Ian could try out that pool they had been looking forward to all day. Unfortunately, the pool was very cold. Maya is Maya and she had a good time swimming anyway. Poor Ian with his absolute lack of body fat tried a few times, but eventually gave up on trying to swim. He and I went up to the hotel room and watched cartoons while Sean hung out with Maya and let her swim.

The octopus mural at Milo

The next morning, we weren’t in too big of a hurry. We checked out of our hotel in time to make our brunch reservation at a place called Milo All Day. It was maybe a little fancy pants, but the food was really good, and I certainly don’t regret eating there. One of the best parts was that walls near the restrooms were painted with a giant octopus whose arms extended out toward you as you walked back, beckoning you into the murky depths (of the impeccably clean bathroom).

Got vultures?

Our last adventure in the Waco area was to visit the Cameron Park Zoo. Right away, we were caught up in the antics of the white-handed gibbons. They had these rope-like woven straps strung between trees to run and swing on. They were situated one above and one below, the top serving as a handhold and the bottom as a base for their feet. The gibbons made easy work of this of course, but to our delight and amazement, one particularly agile gibbon walked across the rope without using the handhold up top. Instead, it swung its long arms to the side to maintain balance. It was an impressive sight.

Giraffes!

The rest of the zoo was fun too, and the weather was perfect. One thing that fascinated me to no end was the large quantity of vultures that shared the outdoor enclosures with whoever was living there. The bears seemed like they could hardly walk for all the vultures hanging out with them. I remember an informative sign explaining they were a mix of black vultures and turkey vultures (I think).

After a very pleasant stroll around the zoo, we drove back home and our little weekend jaunt was officially over. Maya set about writing up Wolfgang’s adventures that evening in the shared German class notebook and took both notebook and bear back to school on Monday.

Wolfgang’s spring break shenanigans

Right away Monday, things got weird. What had started out as a severe thunderstorm warning (to which I had paid little attention) quickly became a large hail and heavy tornado risk situation. Several of the schools had called for early pickup. Our school, mere minutes before the end of the school day, announced the cancelation of all after school activities. We got the kids home and settled in and more or less finished out our work days, keeping half an eye on the weather forecast.

That blue dot is us. All hell broke loose to the north and south of us, but we were very fortunate.

The weather radar was looking pretty terrible, so we gathered the kids up into the only interior room in our house. You’ll see from the photos that they had a “few” things they thought were super important and had to be kept safe in the bathroom as well. We watched a live weather report on our phones showing a tornado having touched down in Round Rock, which is *just* north of us. We watched the straight-faced weatherman kind of freak out a little, because the national weather service seemingly hadn’t been aware of that one. It clobbered portions of the kids’ former nanny Anna’s neighborhood. She was mere blocks away from having sustained damage to her house as well. And then just a short while later, it was all gone and the sun came out.

Chocolate chip ajugas bloom beautiful and purple in early spring.

The rest of the month was quiet. A few plants had started to grow in earnest out in the back yard. We potted up our little Calabrian chili seedlings into real soil and have moved them outdoors. (I had started seeds planted in vermiculite on a heat mat in our bathroom in late February.) I’ve started purchasing plants to get in the ground before the heat, but I’ve been letting the weeds get away from me, as usual. In March, we had already had at least one 90+ degree day. Because Texas.

These numbers were screen-captured right at the end of March. Percentage of US population that has been fully vaccinated (65.2% as of 3/1, 66% as of 4/1). Travis County – 2/28 199,845 cases and 1350 deaths – 3/31 237,325 cases and 1479 deaths. Texas – 3/1 6,617,106 cases and 84,899 deaths – 4/1 6,683,298 cases and 87,549 deaths. United States – 3/1 79,045,719 cases and 950,489 deaths – 4/1 80,039,322 cases and 979,827 deaths. The World – 3/1 437,247,221 cases and 5,958,321 deaths – 3/31 488,524,257 cases and 6,143,724 deaths.