Girls Weekend in Austin

Before I get to the post topic at hand, I wanted to say thank you for all the kind wishes on my birthday last Thursday.  While I am very far from family and friends, I felt surrounded by love on my birthday thanks to all of the phone calls, texts, facebook posts, and emails.  The day was capped off with an awesome google hangout with some of my favorite people!  I had friends from Boston, Chicago, DC, Kamloops, BC, New York, Ohio, St. Louis, and Winnepeg on the chat over the course of 2 hours.  I love technology and the way it can bring people together.  There was lots of laughter, stripes, and I of course celebrated with some macarons.

On Friday I woke up feeling like a little kid on Christmas Eve as I was so excited to hop on a plane to meet up with some best friends from college.  I decided last fall that I did not want to spend my birthday weekend in Charlotte and my friend Heidi was gracious enough to offer to host me in Austin. Our other friend Brooke decided to meet up with us as well...  little did I know they had a little surprise up their sleeve as when Brooke landed in Austin, she had our other friend Amanda with her!  It was the best surprise!  We have not had a weekend together in many many years so were all long over due for some girl time.

I will let the photos do most of the talking for the rest of the post!

Our first stop was an outdoor shopping center where we had lunch and of course treated ourselves to drinks.  I saved my 2 drinks for the month for this weekend and enjoyed a fun cucumber martini drink.  I am a sucker for anything cucumber flavored!

4 friends reunited!

 After an afternoon of shopping (where I scored some great deals), we made a pit stop at Whole Foods and then headed back to Heidi's for the evening. We had an international-themed meal with different dishes representing the different countries in honor of the opening ceremonies.  Dessert was macarons, which is my kind of birthday cake.

On Saturday night, we headed out for a day of exploring and started off by doing this short hike to a look-out area with beautiful views of the Austin area.

It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine!  And yes, I realize that I am totally the odd one out in this photo since I am not wearing any workout wear but I honestly don't own any workout clothes that are cute enough to wear while out and about.

It was so beautiful up there, it seemed like the perfect spot to practice some yoga poses...

After that, we checked out a couple of other popular spots in Austin like Jo's Coffee and Torchy's Tacos, and then did a little shopping in some of the boutiques downtown.

I like stripes but am pretty sure I could not pull off striped sunglasses. 

On Saturday night we headed back downtown for dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then we headed to a really cute wine bar that was located in a quaint little house where we enjoyed table-side s'mores.

On Sunday, Brooke and Amanda flew back to Minneapolis in the morning but I stuck around for most of the day because I am never in a rush to get back to Charlotte.  ;)  I got to spend lots of time with my friend's daughter.   We were both rocking the curls that day and you can't tell in this picture but she is also wearing cream and white stripes!

After spending a couple of hours downtown and eating at a delicious hamburger place that had gluten free buns (yea!) we made one last stop for some macarons.

The light blue one was mine - it was vanilla flavored and was SO good.  Definitely the best macaron I have had this year.

Then it was time for me to head to the airport.  The weekend went so fast but was so much fun.  I am hoping that we can make these girls weekends happen on an annually or every other year. 

I was sad to return to Charlotte, but I left with a full heart.  The last year has been a tough one for me, but weekends like this are a good reminder that I have many blessings in my life, especially the blessing of friendship.