Good Friday in Dallas

Whenever Casey has a holiday weekend, we try to make a small day trip out of it. We hit Houston in September, San Antonio in February, and this weekend.....Dallas.
A 3 hour drive from Austin.
Traveling with the kids seems to be getting easier. Lucy has always been great in the car. And Owen's finally catching on too. It helps that they are such good friends with each other. Often times, they're just sitting back there saying silly things to each other and laughing. After an hour it can be a bit obnoxious but hey, at least they're not fighting (though that happens at times too).
Casey and I visited Dallas once 5 years ago (with my family) but we were interested to try it out again.

First stop, the Fountain Place. There's a large tall mirrored building (which makes picturing taking easy).....
And in the courtyard are tons of fountains! Smelled just like Disneyland's water rides.
We walked around, listening and watching the water, while Owen threw in leaves.
And since spring is officially here, red tulips were everywhere. Lucy thought she should smell each one of them. I asked what they smelled like.
"um....water!"
I had to explain to Owen a few times that these are not like weed flowers (which I let them pick) and that we should just look at them. No picking. He started bawling. I guess the boy loves his flowers?
Mama and kids.
Next we drove around the downtown, taking in sites. Cool trolley wires:
Big billboards:
with the Mad Hatter:
Large murals (which was kind of funny to us since we'd just watched The Cove the night before. A great movie. Definitely one-sided, so more of an expose rather than a "documentary" but quite informative and interesting. Recommend).
And eventually we drove through Dealey Plaza, where JFK was shot.
When we came 5 years ago we did the full-blown tour. And took some serious pictures. This time we just did the drive thru.
After the downtown I visited a darling fabric store called City Craft (more to come about that on MADE).
While I found some great oilcloth, guess who found the candy jar at the counter?
Yep, this girl:
She also wanted to take a picture of us in the car, while waiting at a stop light:
And she really wanted me to take her picture with Ronald. Funny girl. And NO we did not eat McDonald's on our Dallas visit. We actually bought a pizza from a local place. But there was limited seating, so we took it to the nearby McDonald's while the kids ran around. Quite perfect.
The next two stops were my favorite of the day. In the nearby city of Irving is the Mustang Museum.
We were too late to go inside. But all we really wanted to see was the amazing Mustang sculpture in the front plaza. It was just as impressive as we had hoped.
8 different bronze horses, in beautiful formations. The details are amazing. And combined with fountain work, it really looks like they are running and splashing in the water.
This was my favorite stop because the whole atmosphere was just relaxing. The plaza is very large and open, with water and walkways. We just relaxed and walked around. Sat down for a bit.
This photo reminds me of a similar one from our San Antonio trip:
We walked across the water bridges.
Looked at the horses.
And behind the building we found a beautiful lake with a large patio/deck.
And more red tulips. Mmmm.
The forecast had said it was going to rain all day. But the weather ended up being perfect. So we soaked up the late afternoon sunshine.
And Owen took a few falls. He must be having some growing pains because the kid has been falling non-stop. He's got scabbed-over knees to prove it.
But he wasn't sad for long when Casey asked if he wanted to "fly"?

One, Two, THREE!
And for our final stop we went to the Galleria Mall. Just a normal mall with the normal stores. But on the bottom floor is an ice skating rink! I'm bummed I didn't bring my camera along so these were taken with Casey's phone. Cool looking mall and rink:
And the real highlight was that Lucy tried skating for the first time! It was more like Casey dragging and pushing her around the rink. But each time around she got a bit stronger. And she loved it! I had my doubts. I'm so glad she was eager to try and that she had a great time doing it.
Here's a 15 second clip:


And that's Dallas in 7 hours! We left Austin at 11am and we were home by midnight. Great trip.