"Babymoon" Part 3: A Trip to College Station

On Wednesday morning, we headed to College Station {the place where Ben and I first met} and stopped at two places for breakfast along the way.  One of us was hungry for donuts and the other one was hungry for breakfast tacos, so we stopped for both -- because you can do things like that when you're on vacation.  When we got into College Station, we made a loop around campus and then parked near the engineering/architecture buildings so that we could walk around a little bit.  Walking up to campus with Ben was such deja vu and brought back so many wonderful memories.

Me {& my baby bump} in front of the civil engineering building

We even found the pictures of my graduating class...

...and quickly remembered how much I hated the way that they looked.  The lady that took them held the camera about a foot from our faces, which distorted the picture like crazy and made all of us look like goldfish in a bowl.

After stopping by to say "hi" to both Dr. Burris {my advisor in grad school} and Shawn Turner {the researcher that I worked for in grad school}, we decided to walk around campus.  Amazingly enough, Ross Street is no longer under construction and is so pretty now with the star-shaped paver design.

We went by the Annex {where we studied on the 5th floor on a daily/nightly basis} and then walked through the Commons {where Ben and I both lived in the dorms our freshmen year}.  We then walked across campus to see the new MSC building.  Unfortunately, I was wearing jeans and had forgotten how hot and humid it is in College Station, so by the time we got there, I was so glad to get back into the AC.  The new MSC is beautiful, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures.  I did take one of the Academic Building....

and one of the Century Tree.

I absolutely love this campus...

...but I definitely don't miss spending my afternoons in survey lab.

After spending a couple of hours walking around campus, we had really built up an appetite, so we decided go and get some lunch.

If I had a dollar for every time we've ever made this {beautiful} drive out of campus, I'd already be retired.

We ended up going to Layne's for lunch.  Their chicken fingers and fries were just as delicious as ever, and I had forgotten how much I love their crushed ice and toast.

After we ate, we decided to drive by the places that we had lived the first couple of years that we were married.  This was our first place -- Briarwood {a.k.a. BriarHOOD}, Apartment #115.  They look pretty different on the outside with the painted brick and new color scheme, but I have a feeling the inside hasn't changed a bit.  When we moved away, we left a grill locked to the column {mostly because we didn't have anywhere to put it at our next place}, and we're fairly certain that's the exact same one.

We then drove down the street to our first "home" -- Cripple Creek Condos, Unit #70.  It didn't look much different from when we lived there, but we definitely didn't have that much junk on the balcony.  We did notice that they're still enjoying our beautifully tinted window and sliding glass door though, and I really hope that they appreciate all of the effort Ben went to to install that and all of the bad words that I had to listen to in the process. ;)

After the home tour, we went over to TTI to see our friend Fan.  I met Fan when I was in grad school and when she was getting her PhD, but now she works at TTI as a researcher.  It was so good to see her {and her awesome office}, and we had a great time catching up.

After such a busy day, we decided to go check into the hotel and relax a little bit before going out that night. Earlier that day, we had bought tickets for the Aaron Watson concert, so I figured that it would be good to rest my feet for a bit before we danced the night away.

That night, we got dressed up and asked the guy at the front desk to take a picture before we headed out.

We ended up going to Blue Baker for dinner, and although it wasn't at the original location that we used to go to, the food was still really good.

After dinner, we headed over to Hurricane Harry's.  We got there pretty early, and thankfully, the dance floor never really filled up, so we got to dance a lot.  I realized a few days before the trip that our very first dance {at the Texas Hall Fame and to "Texas Angel" by Honeybrowne} had been on October 10th, 2002 -- exactly 10 years prior to the day.  How crazy and special is that?

Ben kept pointing out the fact that we were one of the oldest couples there and that I was the only girl that was pregnant {because he's a sweetheart like that}, but even still, we were some of the last to leave.  We finally left at about 1:30 in the morning, and after a quick trip through the Taco Bell drive-thru, we went back to the hotel and crashed.

On Thursday morning, we slept in, and after I did a few things on the computer for Special Olympics, we headed over to Rosa's for lunch...

...and after saying goodbye to campus, we made our way back home.

The drive back to Austin ended up being pretty exciting since it was during that drive that I felt the baby kick {or punch} for the very first time.  It was so strong that it kinda took me by surprise, and I told Ben that I was pretty sure that you could have felt it from the outside, too.  It only happened just that one time, but I'm pretty sure that he was letting us know that was enjoying the "babymoon", too, and that he loved our trip to College Station just as much as we did.