Fred Leavitt: Off to Austen

With just Mom and I at home I find that I don't have a whole lot of stuff to talk about. Well this weekend I have a whole lot of stuff to talk about. So much so that most of you probably wouldn't read it all so I'm going to break it up into smaller segments and spread it out over a few days.

So the big news is that two weeks ago Brandon received news that he passed his bar exam. For him this is the accomplishment that means the most to him. When he graduated from law school it was a bit of an empty celebration because he still had this big three day long exam hanging over his head and without passing the bar his entire law school would be meaningless. While Lisa and I weren't too worried about him passing he couldn't allow himself to get his hopes up and the closer it came to receiving his results (he wrote the test in August) the more nervous and stressed he would get. When he finally did receive his results it was like a huge load was removed from his shoulders.

Now the big problem was that his swearing in ceremony was only two weeks away making tickets expensive and planning difficult.. I guess we could have been planning to go for several months but we didn't know about the ceremony and Brandon wasn't wanting to get his hopes up. We talked about only one of us going or maybe driving out and then I decided to give "Price Line" a chance. I checked out what the going rate was for tickets to Austin were (the ceremony was in the State Capitol) and then made a bid for nearly half of the regular price. I won the bid. I think I'm going use Price Line more often.

We flew out of San Diego on Saturday and arrived in Austin fairly late in the evening. I had no idea that Austin was famous for their music. I think they are famous specifically for their live music. We figured something was up when we saw guitar stuff all over the airport. The luggage conveyors had these huge ten foot guitars standing on them. It was actually pretty cool.

Brandon and his family drove down and stayed with some friends. We stayed with the Gosch's. They used to live in our ward and moved to Austin. They were kind enough to offer us a room in their very nice house. Even more, they offered to have Brandon and his family join us for Sunday dinner.

We met up with Brandon and his family Sunday afternoon in Zilker Park. It is a huge park and we couldn't possibly see the whole place in one day so we chose to go the Nature Center. We had a lot of fun watching them play with the many hands on displays and stuff. I think the highlight for Sydney was the dinosaur pit. They can use plastic shovels to dig in the sand and uncover some dinosaur bones. They then use a brush to clean all the sand off of the bones. They had a blast.

When dinner time came around we headed to the Gosch's for a very delicious meal. We barbecued chicken and had some rice and salads and we had a great meal. We then visited until late and then Brandon and Serene took their girls back to their friends and put them to bed.