So, after after Thursday and Friday’s delicious eats, it’s hard to imagine that Saturday and Sunday could get better.

Oh, but it did.

I started the day with some cereal and grapefruit from the continental breakfast, which is pretty ho-hum, but things got pretty great around lunch time.

We drove up to Round Rock, a town just a little north of Austin that I had driven through many times before… why?

Salt Lick BBQ!

This place had been on Man vs. Food and Best Thing I Ever Ate before so we had to have it. The restaurant was busy, but not packed: my favorite atmosphere. We decided to order our food family style and share.

I had one of my favorite things.

We started with delicious fresh white bread. I don’t usually love white bread, but yes, I loved this. That had to be a good sign of things to come.

The amount of food that hit our table was ridiculous. I ate a little bit of everything.

That’s a lie. I ate a whole lot of ribs. Soup preferred the sausage, but together we wiped out that whole table. Yeah. The sauce was tangy, the meat was tender… ugh… totally worth the splurge after doing vegetarian 2 a days.

And maybe (definitely) a piece of the most delicious pecan pie a la mode that was devoured before I could even turn the camera on. I was pretty thankful he was there to share it with me, or I probably would have taken care of it on my own.

We walked off some calories at the Round Rock Premium Outlets. Sadly, I didn’t buy anything, but the boy had a few great finds.

After an afternoon nap, we drove out to one of the Alamo Draft Houses. If you’re not familiar, it’s a theatre with full service food and drinks. We have a few in DFW, but nothing that compares to the awesome menu at the Draft House. (If distractions are a concern, trust me that the food service hardly interrupts.) We shared some red pepper hummus, pita and veggies and a wonderful mushroom pizza, which I didn’t photograph, understandably. We watched Where The Wild Things Are and I promptly passed out when we got back to the hotel.

It was time to go home the next morning, sadly. I was unenthused, but the promise of a delicious breakfast helped to sway me.

We stopped in Round Rock again, this time at the famous Round Rock donut. This place was packed out. Totally worth the wait.

We both had one of these.

Just kidding.

Not that our box really looked much better though.

We shared a couple of glazed donuts, a sausage roll with jalapeno and cheese, and an applesauce donut. Holy cow. he donuts were soft, fresh, and oh my goodness, so delicious. The glazed were great, but I prefer a more cakey donut and the applesauce was just my speed. I had a bite of the sausage roll, and it was just the right amount of spicy.

I’m not kidding when I say I fell in love with them. It may be worth the trip to Austin just to have these.

I’d do anything to have one now.

The drive home was less miserable knowing that when we got to Fort Worth, we could go to my favorite taco shop, Fuzzy’s. No picture needed. You know I had to grilled shrimp tacos. As usual. My favorite.

When we got back to my house, I had a visitor. We played for a few hours and then it was time to take my sweetheart back to the airport. I did my best not to sob hysterically on the way home.

The next morning it was back to normal life. : (

I can’t wait for our next visit.

Yeah, I sort of named this series after a Miley song. Don’t judge me. On to recap part one. . . .

After all the craziness that was my Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it was finally time for my sweetheart to arrive. I asked Soup if he was hungry when he got here and he said no, but the minute I mentioned Sonic, his appetite suddenly reappeared.

He had been mentioning Sonic as long as we’ve known each other, so I finally took him. I don’t eat Sonic ever, but I was game for a cherry limeade.

After that, we sat and watched coverage of the Fort Hood shooting until dinner with my parents. The combination of being upset + exhaustion + OH MY GOD MY BOYFRIEND AND MY PARENTS MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME had me in knots, so there were no pictures taken, unfortunately. I coached Soup on how to say chimichanga correctly while we had Mexican food from Mercado Juarez, a local favorite. (I had shrimp with jalapeno & bacon with rice and a little bit of beans.)

I’ll admit, my fears were in vain. They got along beautifully, no awkwardness, no parental apprehensiveness. When Soup and I started dating a little less than a year ago, my parents were understandably hesitant to accept the situation, but I think they really understand that I’m serious about things and it helps to finally put a face with the name. What a relief.

We called it a night pretty early because I was running on about 6 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. We got up nice and early to get on the road to Austin.

We stopped at my favorite place on 35: Czech Stop. This is a must-do for our family when we travel. The city of West has a large, proud Czech population and the pastries here are to die for. Seriously. He ate something or another with sauerkraut and swiss cheese and I had a cheese puff and a poppyseed kolache. Great fuel for the drive ahead.

We finally arrived and knew right where we needed to go.

Sixth Street : )

Not only is it one of my favorite places ever, it’s where the two of us really got to know each other the first time. (Awwww.)

We headed to one of our favorites from last year: Casino El Camino. We split a buffalo burger and their famous verde cheese fries and enjoyed the awesome atmosphere. We had fallen in love with this place last year and knew we had to go back.

After that, we walked off the calories, seeing more of Sixth and heading to the state capital.

Gorgeous, isn’t it?

Unfortunately there was a “tea party” going on outside and Soup quickly escorted me away before I yelled at them all too much. We headed over to the UT campus…

… admired the buildings and hung out on The Drag…

…and then took a bus back to Sixth because I was too tired whiney to walk any further. After a quick nap, we were feeling the mood for sushi.

Rather than drive back to downtown, we found somewhere in slightly more suburban North Austin: Kenobi. You wouldn’t be able to tell that this is in a shopping center by looking at the pictures. The restaurant was pretty and the food was pretty delicious too. (Sorry in advance for the crappy pictures.)

We shared:

a bottle of Coppola Director’s Cut Cabernet & lobster and goat cheese gyoza dumplings

pepper hamachi & a few rolls that were eaten before a picture could be taken

creme brulee for me & unphotographed green tea ice cream for him.

And then we got a little camera happy.

After a wonderful dinner and a LOOOOONG day, we headed back to the hotel where we watched a movie and I hit the pillow like a rock.

Come back tomorrow for the barbecue that had my lips smacking and the donut that had my heart thumping… in a good way. : )

I’m not sure I even have it in my to come up with a creative post title. I’m exhausted. I’m dividing this post into three parts: Quasi-Recap, WSU Update, & Links. Hopefully I can get through it without falling asleep.

Quasi-Recap

The full recap of my weekend will have to wait until later, when I actually have the oomph to do it justice. After posting on Wednesday, my rest of the week went something like this:

• Math Exam
• Write 2 History of World Civ essays
• Study for World Civ exam
• Take World Civ exam
• Rush to get home and pack
• Rush to make sure I was ready (and didn’t smell like the busy college student I am)
• Rush to get my car washed and cleaned out
• Rush to the airport, only to find out his flight would be late
• Walk into the airport to find that the website was wrong and he had just arrived
• Find out about the shooting at Fort Hood and frantically check on my friends there, cry over the news (this lasted for most of the weekend)
• Dinner with my parents (read: my boyfriend and parents meeting for the first time, and yes, we’ve been dating for nearly a year)
• Drive to Austin
• Hang out in Downtown
• Walk and walk and walk and walk
• Drive to Round Rock
• Eat way too much BBQ
• Movies
• Start the drive home
• Fall in love with a donut
• See my niece and nephew
• Drop boy off at the airport
• Fall asleep watching the Cowboys game
• Crash

I’ve been pretty busy since I last wrote. It was all amazing and I can’t wait to share it all with you guys.

WSU Update

Today is the beginning of Week 4. To say I fell off the wagon would be an understatement. However, I did walk a lot and drink plenty of water, but strength training went out the window. I tried hard to stick with my vegetarian 2 a day plan, but Friday I decided to let it slide. I am cutting myself some slack though because it was a pretty special weekend. : )

Links!!!

This is where laziness kicks in and I share the amazing things I’ve found elsewhere on the web instead trying to create something equally brilliant on my own. Here’s what you may have missed over the past week, especially if you’ve been as busy as I have.

• FitSugar’s Eight Habits of the Super Healthy
• Fitnessista’s Interior Design Tips
• Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe for perfect scrambled eggs
• Glamour’s What to Eat When Eating Healthy Isn’t an Option
• Girls Gone Healthy: College Eating 101, the first podcast by two of my favorite bloggers
• More Glamour: 4 Surprising Things That Help Ward Off Colds & Flu
• Simply Savor’s Pumpkin Cream Cheese Wontons… yes please!
• And last, Bakerella’s Sesame Street Cake Pops (If you haven’t made cake pops, you are missing out. They are easy and make a huge impact.)

Seriously, these are too cute. (Photo from Bakerella.com)

Today is unfortunately Monday… the beginning of my week and the end of an amazing weekend. I leave you with this final thought:

HOW. BOUT. THEM. COWBOYS!!!