Stephen, Shara, & Tyson: Trip to Austin!

We just returned from a fabulous trip to Austin, Texas, for Stephen's work retreat. Stephen boarded a bus with all his fellow Bain employees on Wednesday, and spouses were invited to join on Thursday. The retreat took place at an amazing Marriott Resort. On Wednesday Stephen attended some meetings, had dinner, and attended a fun Olympic-themed costume party (he went as a basketball player). On Thursday I sat at the pool with some of the girls (Stephen had to work for a few hours), and then Stephen and I had fun playing some games and walking around the amazing resort. That evening we attended a dinner, enjoyed some music and dancing put on by the Bain Band (musically talented employees of Bain), and then boarded shuttles to a lakeside destination on the resort. See pics below.

Here we are playing some games on Thursday afternoon.

We enjoyed walking around the amazing resort!

Here we are at dinner on Thursday night.

The lakeside destination where we spent the evening was quite the place. The darkness beyond the palm trees is the big lake.

Here we are with the lake behind us.

On Friday afternoon the Bain retreat officially ended and we took off to have our own fun in Austin! We got a kebab at a street stand in downtown and it brought back memories of eating kebabs on the streets of Vienna, Austria. After that we did my favorite activity of this entire year - paddle boarding! I had never even heard of it, but it was a blast. Stephen quite enjoyed jumping on to my board and knocking us both in the water, and I'll admit, I thought it was pretty fun too. After that we enjoyed snow cones! That evening we checked out some shops in town, including an awesome boot store (Stephen wants his own pair of Texas boots, but the $700 price tags at this shop made us think his dream will never be realized). After shopping we ate pizza, then enjoyed looking at the beautiful lake while we waited for the bats to emerge! At dusk every day over one million bats fly out from underneath the Congress Bridge in downtown Austin. It was a neat sight! The next day we met up with a bunch of Stephen's friends from Bain who were still in town and tubed the Guadalupe River. It was a slow going river, but we had fun. Three coats of sunscreen during the 5-hour float proved to be unsuccessful though - the Texas sun is hot! We both came home with pretty good sunburns.