austin adventures

Last fall, my mom came home from an auction with a Biscuit Brothers CD and tickets to a show at the Paramount Theatre in Austin. For April. The concert has been sitting on my calendar for all these months, but, until Wednesday evening, I wasn’t sure whether we’d make the trip to Texas. We did. We had a wild ride to Texas and a nice Saturday at the Red Poppy Festival in Georgetown.

On Sunday, we headed down to Austin and picked up my sister and worked our way over to the Paramount Theatre on Congress. Traffic was backed up due to road closures for the Art City Austin Festival. By the time we had parked, had some lunch and made our way to the theater, it was just about time for the show to start.

Attending a children’s performance in a historic theater has its pluses and minuses. The theater itself beautiful and exciting, regardless of the show. But, seating is complicated. When there are tall adults and short children all mixed together, it is sometimes, even with boosters, hard for the kids to see the stage. I watched and participated in a domino of musical chairs. One adult switches seats. Then an adult in a row behind the first adult has to switch so the child can see again. And this ripples all the way to the back.

Finally, the show got under way! We knew going in that Camille is now too old for the Biscuit Brothers. She’s hit that stage of being self-conscious of being too silly (unlike the adults who have gotten past worrying about how silly they are being). Chloe, on the other hand, is still young enough that she had a blast. She loved all the participation and silliness. Most of the songs were “traditional” ones that we know well; others were new to us. The Biscuit Brothers added something new and different to each song, which kept us wonderfully engaged and entertained.

Following the show, we walked down to Congress to the Art City Austin Festival. The girls enjoyed looking at all of the art, and I didn’t have to say “No, you can’t buy that.” because they realized that everything there was way out of their price range. In the kids’ area, I wa a little shocked by the prices of “tattoos” $15 each! Yikes! The girls did an art project each, for the extremely reasonable price of $1 a piece. School of Rock (not our favorite act — these are big kids playing rock music and not music aimed at kids) was on the stage.

Hot, it was so hot. Chloe had a big snow cone and Camille an ice cream cone to help keep cool, but we kept remarking “It’s only April!!” And, yes, Camille really did wear her heavy black traveling cloak and jeans. Intelligent child, yet sometimes lacks foresight.