Tayler has had a trip to Waco Texas to visit "Magnolia Silos" on her bucket list for AWHILE now.
We talk about it off and on each Spring and Fall.
We even make tentative plans but it's never happened.
Tayler came up with a plan this fall that I turned down. I mean there's a wedding, Christmas, we just bought couches etc. etc.... oh and COVID.
So I told her we'd THINK about it over Spring Break.
Then on October 25th... Tayler and Jaden announced that we were going to be grandparents! That's super exciting! And right after that she said, "that's why I can't go over Spring Break... can we PLEASE make it work..." she had it all planned out in her mind for us. Waco, San Antonio, Sea World etc.etc.etc.
So the next day I did some real planning, booked flights for all the girls, rented a car and found us super fun places to stay.
Basically it was deemed their Christmas... but the truth is I pretty much already had stuff for their Christmas so... once again... they got me. :)
We left the afternoon of Friday the 13th (November)... luckily all went well. haha
And made it quickly to our hotel on the riverwalk and headed out to explore.
We ate at Acenor... a super yummy mexican restaurant, lots of good laughs since we couldn't understand what was on the menu. Kenna asked, "Do you just have a burrito or something?" He smiled and said no. "How about a taco?" Nope not that either. haha
When the food came out we were nervous... but it all looked much more familiar than the menu led us to believe. ;)
The next morning was spent with more exploring of the riverwalk.
You know the BEST time to travel? Right now... when others aren't.
It was so nice and calm and people are super polite and kind. They want you in their restaurants and are happy to have tourists.
It was AWESOME!
Like look at the Riverwalk... we pretty much had it to ourselves on a Saturday morning!
Our next stop was Sea World!
It opened at 1 and we were right on time for a fantastic day.
The shows were fun, the rides were HUGE and scary and fun, but there just isn't as much at Sea World as I remember. Not nearly as many exhibits? But maybe that's just me remembering different? Or Sea World Orlando and California are different? I'm not sure, but we'd had plenty of fun and even left before it closed @ 9.
Rudy's BBQ for dinner and then The Gunther House for Breakfast the next morning.
Then we were off to the Alamo.
We were glad we had purchased the audio tour, because none of us would have got nearly as much out of it if we hadn't. hahaha
Then we drove for 3 hours to... Waco.
Waco is in the middle of no where. There's Baylor University which has a beautiful campus and there's all of the fun "Magnolia" stuff that we came for. But Waco as a whole is NOT a place you'd visit. It's a VERY small town feel. We only saw ONE "pretty" neighborhood. The rest... well it looks just like on fixer upper where you wonder how they found that many awful, rundown, deserted, super disgusting houses. Cuz the majority of the houses look that way.
It was weird.
We drove all over looking for the houses that had been flipped on fixer upper (thanks to google) and we could usually point it out before we knew the exact address because there would be 1 nice house on a street of not great houses. Waco is poor and has a super high crime rate which was why it was odd that we found Chip and Joanna's house right on the side of the main road!
These girls were hard core fan girling!
The girls were super pumped about our airbnb tiny house we stayed in!
It was perfect!
It was in a complex of a bunch of tiny homes... built and owned by a mennonite family who lived in a trailer on the lot. An interesting thing that we learned about Waco is that there are more churches... than I have ever seen in a town... Like 2 on every block... there are LOTS of baptist churches... but I looked on google and found there are 138 DIFFERENT churches in Waco.
So a religious town with lots of crime.
Waco has (according to google) "one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities."
But back to the tiny home... my girls loved it. I think it was great for traveling, but question how someone could actually live in it, there isn't room for anything!
Oh, also we think we saw Joanna, but we didn't know we saw Joanna.
We drove by Sunday night and Kenna took this video, then on the next corner we crossed a train track, turned around and had a huge long train to wait for before we could drive back by Magnolia.
Later that night Joanna posted a clip on her instagram story about how Magnolia was ready for Christmas and you could hear the train in the background. So we think the lady running in this video is Joanna. What do you think?
We were so close to meeting her. ;)
The next morning we headed straight for Magnolia!
We had breakfast at Magnolia Table.
We got the last reservation for the day... three week before when I booked the trip.
We could have done standby and waited a couple of hours though. haha
It was... delicious!
More shopping at Joanna's original shop.
And more shopping and sweet treats @ Magnolia Silos and shops.
Our long weekend was ABSOLUTELY Perfect!
Right down to calling Delta to see if there was any way we could switch our 2 leg flight to the direct flight. The cute agent said, "Oh, that's going to cost you a lot." I replied, "OK, I just thought I'd check." Then an immediate.... "Just kidding, I've already switched all of you." YAY!!!
Texas was the perfect girls trip!
There is NOTHING better than spending time with these five energetic, fun, adventurous girls!!
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