Anderson - all 2'4" of him - at the Children's Museum in Austin ...Mary and the Malloy boys visited Texas from Rochester, NY (home of the "lilac festival" ... ugh) to see what it's like to be in a manly part of the world. After first parking their saddles in Houston, they hopped into the rented SUV and moseyed into our neck of the woods.
A painful amount of "Texanisms", eh?
Having them here forced us to leave the air-conditioned confines of our house, which we will be remodeling starting in winter/early spring. We went to the Children's Museum and then the zoo, which is a safe haven for exotic animals that were owned by private citizens who bit off more than they could chew.
First, the museum, which had a "construction zone", for all of those parents who dream of their kid growing up to compete with illegal immigrants for a low hourly wage. Or an engineer. Maybe that's the idea ...
Anderson getting ready to go into the construction zone ...
In a building undersized for little construction workers ...The following day we went to the zoo and saw an assortment of wild animals, including panthers, tigers and lions. Remarkably these animals were being kept at home as "pets". Imagine being the unsuspecting burglar who sneaks into one of those homes ...
Even more remarkably was the fact that they called this the "Austin" Zoo, even though the zoo is so far outside of Austin that you think you're almost in Mexico.
Mary and family with Natalie, Anderson and me ...Having to interact with Mary took a lot of energy out of Anderson, although the boys liked playing with him and are remarkably well-adjusted (and even intelligent!) considering their mother's parentage. After intensive psychotherapy to recover from the experience, Anderson needed to recover ...
