Flat Stanley Visits Austin, TX!

The Ruchti's moved to Austin, Texas almost a year ago and though we love it here, we miss our friends in Portland very much. To our delight, our friend Lauren M. sent her friend Flat Stanley our way to see the sights. We have loved having him here.

Austin is the 4th largest city in the state of Texas and is known as the "Live Music Capital of the World." There are lots of places to go listen to bands perform live. We took Flat Stanley to a popular venue near our house (we can hear the concerts from our backyard on the weekends!) Here he is in front of the Nutty Brown Cafe.


It's very hot here! It has been 100 degrees this week so we've been spending lots of time at the pool cooling off. Riley also joined the swim team and we brought Flat Stanley to her first swim meet. He was very hot in his shirt and tie and almost jumped in the pool with her!

We live in an area of Texas they call the "Hill Country" because it's not completely flat like the rest of the state. The area is known for its rolling hills and beautiful landscape. There are lots of wildflowers here and we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to learn more about the native plants and flowers in the area. It was beautiful and we think Stanley enjoyed smelling the flowers. ;)

You can read more about the wildflowers here: www.wildflower.org.

On the way home, we saw a sign for a Cowboy Church. Stanley wondered if you need to be a cowboy to attend services? We aren't sure!


Later that evening, we took Stanley downtown to see something very unusual. The largest urban population of bats lives under the Congress Bridge.

There are up to 1.5 million bats that live under the bridge! Starting in late February, every evening at sunset the bats fly out from under the bridge in search of insects. There are so many of them that they can be seen on a weather radar! You can see them flying in our video if you look closely. You can read more about the bats at www.batcon.org.

Finally, Riley took Stanley to school with her to visit Mrs. Smith's 2nd grade class. The last day of school at Rooster Springs is June 3rd so the class is getting ready for their end of the year party! Stanley thought Mrs. Smith's class was a lot like Miss Johnson's 2nd grade class in Portland. Imagine that!

It was so fun having Flat Stanley here as our guest - we will sure miss him. Thank you to Lauren M. and Miss Johnson's class at Findley Elementary in Portland for letting us share Austin with him! Goodbye Flat Stanley!