Amber, Trevor, and Playing the Tourist

We were SOOOOO excited to have a visit from Amber and Trevor this week.  It was a short visit, but we packed in as much fun as we could.  I hadn't done much of the touristy stuff in Amarillo.  To be honest, I wasn't even sure what tourists do here.  So I found a travel blog, came up with an action plan, and voila! we all became Amarillo tourists.  

First stop Tuesday morning was a trip to The Big Texan.  According to Amber, this restaurant was made famous by the movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."  I lost enough brain cells due to pregnancy that I'm not about to make it worse by watching that movie.  I'll just take her word for it.  And you should take mine by visiting this restaurant.  It was awesome!

So the outside is (obviously) loud and obnoxious and decorated with giant cows, boots, and windmills. Perfect!

Had to get a shot of Luke by the big windmill.

He asked if he could just stay outside and stare at it all day.

The inside was decorated by lots and LOTS of dead animal heads.

But somehow, even with all that, it had a really homey feel.

Our waitress was awesome. 

And our boys had freedom to move around and explore a little.

Also, much to Luke's excitement, there were also LOTS of ceiling fans. 

The food was great.  We had the breakfast buffet that included biscuits and gravy, french toast, pancakes, omelets, breakfast enchiladas (YUM!), fruit, cereal, sausage, bacon (thick AND crispy), scrambled eggs.... See why you need to go there?

The Big Texan is actually famous for steak-- not the breakfast buffet.  There is a big platform at the front of the restaurant where those ready brave enough... or stupid enough try to win a free dinner by eating a 72 oz. steak, baked potato, side salad, and bread all under 1 hour while everyone in the restaurant watches.  

And apparently this is SOLELY a tourist restaurant because when our waitress asked where we were coming from and I answered here in town, she looked totally shocked.  

Exploring upstairs

We took a quick peeksy in the gift shop.  I could spend a fortune in there.  They had the best little cowboy stuff EVER.  Instead I spent nothing, and we went on to our next adventure:

So you know from reading Jared's post about his dates with Luke that he and Luke had been here before.  Lucky for us-- because he gave us the heads up to bring spray paint.  We nabbed 2 cans from Wal-mart and felt very prepared.  It turns out that to be truly prepared you need about 5 cans so that when beggars come asking for extra, you are prepared to give them more than a retelling of the 10 virgins.  And, should any of you actually come to town, let me give you the advice to bring some white and black paint along with your colors.  For us, we had green and pink. 

And a lot of wind.  Not the best weather for spray painting.  But we all had a blast anyway.

Notice his tie...

HAHAHAHA!

And then home to google how to get spray paint off skin (EYE MAKE-UP REMOVER!) and to get Luke ready for school.

That evening we met Jared at the duck pond for a picnic and family pictures.  We have never paid for family pictures and probably never will as long as we can talk family or friends into taking a few for us.  We nabbed the opportunity to shove a camera into Amber's hands.  Combined with Trevor's mad photo-shopping skills we ended up with a pretty good shot:

This was the real picture:

And since it was the ONLY shot with both the boys looking at the camera, Trevor took my face from another photo and created the picture above.  Thanks, Trevor!

A few other shots from the evening:

And, for a fair trade, they got pictures too.

I know the lighting isn't perfect, but minus the one picture that Trevor played with, none of these shots are edited.  I have no doubt that Trevor will make these into framable masterpieces.

I love this one!

And that was day 1!