Turns out having a full-time job greatly reduces the amount of free time you have to both blog about life and to do blog-worthy activities. But I'm back! Here's what we've been up to lately:

Last weekend, some of Ali's college friends came down to visit for a long weekend. We had so much fun and got to show them our favorite Austin spots and explore some new ones as well. They arrived late on Thursday evening, and we immediately took them to Torchy's Tacos and devoured a bunch of queso. I've started just ordering one taco so I'm not too full to finish the queso, because it's pretty much the greatest. Seriously, there's guac mixed into the middle of it. On Friday, the girls drove up to Waco to experience all things Fixer Upper while Peter and I worked. We had BBQ and then went out on Rainey Street on Friday night and discovered a cool bar made out of shipping containers, where we stayed pretty much the whole night. Peter drove us around the whole weekend, which basically makes him a saint. At one point he endured a car full of (post-multiple-bars) girls yelling Taco Bells orders at him, so that's what he had to deal with ;).

On Saturday, we explored South Congress and stopped for a drink at Perla's, an oyster bar with a really cute nautical theme. It was nice and sunny when we got there, and then randomly started pouring on us an hour or so later. Typical Autin. None of us minded, though, because sitting outside in January is a luxury for us Minnesotans, with or without some rain.
On Saturday night we ventured to The Broken Spoke, which is a famous tourist destination for traditional country dancing. Unfortunately, there was a special event going on that evening and the cover was $12, which seemed a bit steep to us. While we were standing in the entryway trying to scope out our next move, we started talking to a couple who was originally from a small town outside the area who told us about another dance hall down the road called Dance Across Texas. We decided to give it a try, and it ended up being the highlight of the weekend. There were tons of people who actually knew how to two-step and a few really amazing dancers who were so fun to watch. I asked some of my coworkers how/why everyone knew how to dance so well, and apparently line dancing is taught in Texas schools. Of course it is.

We fumbled our way through most of the dances, but it was so fun and Ali and I have declared it our new weekend hang out. If you want to have an authentic Texas experience in Austin, and potentially learn how to dance from a legit cowboy (Ali did!) I would definitely head here.
 We had to take all of the traditional Austin pictures, of course:

We had tons of fun having visitors, and I just want to throw out the fact that it's currently 77 degrees, so if anyone else needs to escape the winter up north...we have a large couch and an air mattress!

Other than that, I've been adjusting to work life and finally finished training last Friday. I have Sundays and Mondays off, so tomorrow is my first day 'in the wild'. Ali started a new job last week, and happens to work across the street from me! So we had lunch together a few days last week, which was fun. She is working at Nordstrom for a few more Saturdays, so she hasn't had too much time off lately, to say the least. Peter is in Rochester, New York this week for work, so I'm predicting at least a few large bug sightings and probably some appliance breakdowns ;). Just kidding. But really, these things always seem to happen when he's out of town.

I am off to run some errands and make lunch, but now that I'm settled into a routine at work, I plan to blog a bit more frequently, so stay tuned for more riveting tales from my life.

Prior to checking out the new brewery, we ate pizza at another new restaurant in our neighborhood, Aviator Pizza, that just opened a few weeks ago. We've driven by this particular retail space a million times, since it's on our way to the grocery store and Target, and have kept tabs on what's taking up residence. There's a place called Super Donut that we've been essentially stalking but sadly there has been little to no progress since October, so we're kind of assuming the project ran out of money. Probably for the best anyway. A donut shop within walking distance sounds like trouble. Especially because I would drive there approximately 100% of the time.
We've done a pretty good job so far this year hitting some of our 'Austin bucket list' destinations and continued the trend on Friday night at TopGolf, a national chain that is best described as bowling, but golf. Plus food and drinks. If you live near one of these, I highly recommend it! It's something different than the usual bar or restaurant and isn't too expensive if you've got a group of five or six.

Peter was, of course, the best of our group, and the rest of us had fun but decided not to quit our day jobs ;). Our friend Esther came close to decapitating the guy in the bay next to ours. Whoops.


Speaking of cool business concepts...last night we decided to celebrate the long weekend by roasting marshmallows on our own personal flame at a cute little coffee shop downtown called Halcyon. A few different people have told us about their infamous S'mores dessert, so we (along with a billion other people) decided to give it a try. We waited for what seemed like forever for our tray to arrive, so finally Peter went up to the counter to figure out what was going on. Turns out, they forgot about us so they apologized and took the whole S'mores order off of our tab. Score!

I thought it would be fun to take a look back on some of my favorite 2016 moments and memories, so here goes!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Wishing you all health, happiness, and adventure in the new year!