Austin Rodeo, BBQ, and House Projects

Well it's Monday morning and everyone has left. My parents were in town this weekend and Jeremy came down from Houston. It was the first time the four of us hung out, but it went really well. Thursday night we did the traditional Rudy's BBQ dinner and just relaxed for the rest of the night. Friday, Dad and I decided to install a light off the back deck of the house by the grill. A few trips ago we had installed a light on the other deck, but I was getting tired of grilling by headlamp, so I decided that it was a good time to put a light on the grill side too. It went fairly well, and in the end there was only one extra drill hole that had to be patched up. Not too shabby. We also tried installing a heat radiant barrier on the skylight in my living room. That project did not go so well, and after about an hour or less we decided that it would be better to call someone to have this done instead of trying it ourselves. (On a side note, I've since learned that domed skylights cannot be tinted, or it's impossible to find someone to do it. So I need to move onto plan B for the summer, which is to rig up some kinda shade structure over the skylight) Saturday the four of us went to the Austin Rodeo and Livestock Show. It was AWESOME! This past weekend happened to be the BBQ Cook off, which is so much fun! So there were about 20 different teams there all cooking away for the entire weekend in different competitions (beans, bloody marys, ribs, brisket, etc). Then what they do is allow you to sample all of the food, the only thing they ask is for a small donation which all goes to charity. Basically the four of us ate all we could eat for like $15. Oh and did I mention the drinks are free too? It was INSANE. We all ate way too much, but the BBQ was so delicious. After leaving the BBQ cook off and walking around the rest of the rodeo for a while we thought about going back, but then decided that our stomachs probably couldn't take in any more food. So what did we do next? Well naturally we went home and cooked more food for dinner! Sunday we spent most of the day working on the front yard, redoing some of the landscaping. After about 6 hours of that, we went to Mandola winery and then to the Saltlick. Overall it was a wonderful weekend. And now I'm looking forward to a relaxing week.