Port Aransas, TX Adventure with Queso & Amigo

Watch out for the sharks!!!!!!They can be dangerous.

Family shark photo. Everyone has one of these, right?
Sunset at the marina.
Stopped in Lockhart (the BBQ capital of Texas) for a little brisket and sausage. Yummy!

Ben & Michelle's Adventures in Brazil

Double-click on the image below to take you to the slide show movie of our trip so you can see bigger pictures!!! Then when in Picasa, you can get a full screen image of the show by selecting the full screen option found at the bottom right of the video-player controls.

Walking on the beach in Rio de Janeiro

We are home safe in Austin!

After what has seemed like for forever traveling, we are finally home safe. We are both pretty tired and moving pretty slowly, but it is great to be home with the pups. They are definitely enjoying being home and playing with us.

I will update with some photos and stories soon.

Ahhhhhhh...

Ben and Michelle’s Day in PA- More pics

Ben and Michelle’s Day in PA

We took a bus tour of the city on Thursday. It was a double decker bus and we sat on the top in the front row. Sadly, it was the coldest day since we had arrived, so it was a frigid ride around the city. It was interesting to see all of the parks, the soccer stadiums, the bay and many historic buildings. Following the bus tour we spent some time wandering around the central and busiest part of downtown. We did a little shopping and found a buffet with incredible variety for lunch. There are tons of buffets here. There is a brand of clothes here that is popular called Beagle Brand - so as you can guess, we had to go there for a few items! J

We meandered around a couple of museums. The museums here are free, so we just played “what do you think the title of this piece of artwork is?” while we tried to warm up from the cold. It was impressionists and modern art, so it was pretty funny to see what we could come up with.

In the late afternoon we went on a sunset cruise of the bay. Strangely enough, there was a film crew on board shooting a movie. It was neat to watch them and to interact with the crew and actors. Apparently the main actor is a famous Brazilian model, so I can guess you can say we had a brush with fame with our Brazilian celebratity sighting.

The cold evening ended at a local bar not far from out hotel with a couple of folks from Dell for a farewell happy hour. What a wonderful way to end the day.

An evening with Maria Rita

We joined Lu & Geert one night to see a samba concert of a popular Brazilian artist. The concert hall was located in the mall, which also included a grocery store, restaurants, armed guards and of course your typical mall shops.

The concert was great and really fun. The floor area was general admission, which meant you could dance. We had a fabulous time dancing in our own style, which I am sure included a mix of tango, merange, samba and two-stepping! Ha! Who knows what we looked like to other people, but we had a wonderful time experiencing our first samba concert! Obrigado to Lu and Geert for making that happen.

We ended the evening with dinner at a nice restaurant in the mall that used to be a dance club.
These malls don’t mess around. I have a feeling you could really accomplish a lot by spending a day at
“the mall” here. What and excellent date place. You could shop for a new outfit & shoes, get your nails done, have dinner and a movie/theater date, hit the club for some dancing and then buy your engagement ring on the way out…along with a bottle of chanpange to celebrate. it’s a one stop shopping kind of place. Ha!