More Places to Visit in San Antonio, TX

This is the last of my San Antonio installment - The Guenther House and Oak Hills Church - but definitely not the last places you can visit. There's still plenty more that we have to explore in this city. We plan to go back in late August to show the Manigsaca's around San Antonio and also to potentially attend Beth Moore's Living Proof Live. Meanwhile, here are the 2 places we visited last month during our anniversary road trip.

The Guenther House
We serendipituously discovered this historic place while we were strolling around the King William District. At the southern end of the San Antonio River's wider path is this restored house of the Guenthers - the founding family of the Pioneer Flour Mills - in the same ground as the still very functional flour mill and silos.



The house serves as a museum that showcases the architecture, home furniture and decors of the bygone era, and of course the company's history. It also contains the souvenir and retail store with lots of cool stuff including their own specialty flours. The house has a restaurant and is open for rent as a banquet facility. Good resting and snack place before resuming the stroll back to the Beauregard House.

Oak Hills Church
This is Max Lucado's church. Except from hearing him in person in the free CBN taping last year, I don't really know him but he's authored lots of books that I usually see in Family Christian Bookstore. I've always been intrigued with the one entitled "Cure for the Common Life" but have not really dug into it. Maybe someday... Or maybe the CD version is a better idea for road trips...hmmm....



They've got a big building mostly for ministries - see the map above. They have 3 locations and on the Sunday that we visited, the pastor for the Latino location was the speaker. I frankly can't remember his message very well but I what remember is that he used the Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote/Man from La Mancha. Again, I forgot the context. :( I know I took some notes... now if I can just find them...

Anyway, just closing on the places we explored last month from our anniversary road trip. I don't think this would be the last San Antonio places you'll hear from me though. With just 1 hour drive away, we definitely will be back there in no time. And I will bring back the pictures to share with you!

So, am I being successful in luring you all to come visit us here in the heart of Texas? :)

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Who Knew Facepainting is Soooo In Demand?

The church did facepainting first at the Dripping Springs' Founder's Day. Then we did it again at the Dripping Springs' Fourth of July Celebration, like I mentioned in yesterday's post on the fireworks.

The facepainting team worked with no break from 6:30-8:30pm on a long line of customers until it was dark and even after the fireworks already started.

Check out the many, cute painted faces below - the butterflies, the flags, Spiderman, kitty-cats, the leopard, the in-demand dragons and even yellow skeletons (hahaha!!!)



It's fun! Maybe you can do facepainting on your next event too - or maybe at your child's birthday party? What you'll need is just materials and designs.

Materials - you can just search "face paint" from these websites:

• S&S Worldwide - Free shipping on order $49+. Use coupon code W2437 during checkout. Valid until 12/31/2008.


• Oriental Trading - Free shipping on order $60+. Use coupon code rls 100 during checkout. Valid until 10/4/2008.


• Kuzsports

Designs - here are sampling of resources:

• There are 11 free designs at Face Painting Designs


• There are 40++ for sale designs at Easy Face Painting and lots of tips.


• More tips at Face Painting Tips.

Enjoy!

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How Did You Celebrate the Fourth of July?

We celebrated the 4th of July with a small town feel in Dripping Springs, TX. We were in the Sportsplex early at 6:30 pm because the church has a publicity tent where Al joined the facepainting team. (More on facepainting tomorrow!)

Anyway, here is the video I caught of the firework's last stretch:


That was the end of the $11,000-worth of fireworks!!! Not too bad for small-town Dripping Springs, huh?

We actually really liked the small-town feel of the celebration though. The Sportsplex had plenty of space for all the people who came. We were seated on our camp chairs and the fireworks were just above us! No jostling for position to see the fireworks.

The only thing I missed was that there was no interesting architecture to get fireworks pictures or silhouette with.

We met a couple of folks who were actually from Austin or the other nearby cities like Wimberly and Johnson City. For the Austin folks, it was a good alternative to the traffic galore of downtown Austin's celebration. For the visitors from other nearby cities, their own cities did not have the fireworks celebration.

How about you? How did you celebrate the 4th?

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Happy Birthday...

...dear Al!
Happy birthday, dear Al!
Happy birthday, happy birthday!
Happy birthday, dear Al!!!

My honey-bunny just turned another year older, and wiser :)

The good news is that all my recipes turned out delicious (ehem, ehem...) - lumpia shanghai, arroz valenciana and chicken barbeque. Josh even said "Good job in cooking (the lumpia)." :)



Shiela and Joey cooked sweet and sour lapu-lapu (red snapper). (Where's the pancit?) Hehehe...

The bad news is the Mamang Luisa is soo sick she could not even get out of her room and does not have the appetite to sample the food! They're at urgent care right now and should be back in a few hours and we'll know what's ailing her.

Meanwhile, here's to another good week ahead of all of us!

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The Manigsaca's are Here!

Daddy Eli and Mamang Luisa arrived last Wednesday night! They're body clocks are still adjusting to Austin time, so we're taking it easy on them - no tourist stuff yet until Saturday. Except for a trip to Home Depot...


Anyway, they are enjoying Josh, how much he's grown and how fluent he's speaking now. They've got 'rithmetic lessons lined up!

Yesterday night, we just walked to the amenity center, showed them around the grounds and lounged at the outdoor patio there. Very nice weather - not hot, not warm, not humid, not cold either - just right! I hope it stays this way throughout summer!

Meanwhile, we are enjoying healthy vegetable and fish cooking (no sauteing in oil!) called "sari-sari" (loose translation = "all different" or "mixture of somethings"). Yummy-yummy! And guilt-free, too! I gotta apprentice on this while they are here so that I can do that too even after they return to the Philippines.

BTW, we spruced up their room a bit - Home Depot's Behr paint $20 and Ikea stuff (thanks Ikea for your affordable stuff!) - and I do say it looks good! Will take a photo one of these days and include it here.

Have a good week-end, everyone, and I will post more next week!

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Historic King William District in San Antonio, TX

The Beauregard House bed and breakfast in San Antonio, TX was in the historic King William District. So while there, we thoroughly enjoyed our stroll through the King William District that we did it twice - on Saturday afternoon and then on Sunday morning again. We admired the old-style houses, mostly well-maintained and had lush landscaping.



We also walked through a very quiet part of the San Antonio River. HEB grocery headquarters are nearby and along the river also. (Trivia - this estate-like HEB HQ used to be a US Arsenal built in 1859 to furnish munitions to Texas frontier forts. It served as a supply depot in the Civil War, as well as during both World Wars. In 1985, HEB bought the 10 acre site and undertook adapted use of the original buildings. It is said that HEB was instrumental in reviving this part of the river/town.). Very nice place to take a walk - highly recommended!

As I mentioned earlier, I have limited photos throughout our stay. However, I saw these photos in the web that had the old-style houses in the King William District.

Enjoy this in your mind right now. When you come visit us, will take you there!

So when are you coming over to visit? :)

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Our First Bed and Breakfast Experience

Ever since one of our couple friends in Boise shared with us that they celebrated their anniversary in a bed and breakfast inn (or commonly known as B&B), I was intrigued by the idea of doing something similar. So for our 5th anniversary, we went out of town to San Antonio and reserved to stay in a bed and breakfast inn.

There were a couple of inns we shortlisted. After considering availability, location and price, we went for Beauregard House's Picasso Room. It's a historic 1905 house located in the equally historic King William District where the houses are nestled in between lush vegetation - feels very soothing and peaceful!




For those who are intrigued by the idea of bed and breakfast inns, the best resource I found was bedandbreakfast.com. It has the most extensive list of B&B inns in the US and Canada. It summarizes the Reviews, Ratings, Rooms, Rates and available services. It has all the B&Bs for your search location mapped out. All these in just 1 page so it gives you a birds' eyeview of what are available before you zoom in into too many details! It also shows room availabilities and links to the B&Bs own websites.

bedandbreakfast.com will definitely help you shortlist faster and more efficiently. Once you have a shortlist, then you can drill down to each B&B inn and read everything that is in there. For me, it was the Reviews and my considerations of availability, location and price that led us to this wonderful experience! For convenience, you can also reserve your selected B&B in the same website. So right there and then, you can book a B&B at bedandbreakfast.com without having to go to another website! How convenient is that!?!

It's interesting to note that B&Bs are advertised as being great gifts or for personal use on honeymoons, anniversaries, girlfriends getaway, multi-generational get-aways, valentines, etc. (More information on the BedandBreakfast.com Gift Certificates is here.) As for us, it's priced relatively more than the roadside traveler's hotel but it was worth the experience - even just once! We're just glad that we heard about bed and breakfast from our friends in Boise!

Any of you stayed in a bed and breakfast inn already? What did you like most about it?

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A Cultural Celebration at the McNay

Another place that made it into our 5th anniversary road trip itinerary was "the McNay"(art museum in San Antonio) for 2 similar reasons:
1) for the photo opportunity
2) for admission being free because of the opening of the Stieren Center for Exhibitions (great timing!)

I was impressed with the collection. Although the Smithsonian had more of the masters, the McNay seemed to have the better ones. In fact, I had to really take a picture of Monet's Waterlilies and forgot to turn off the flash! They had a couple of O'Keefe, a collection of small Rodin scultures, Matisse, Mondrian, contemporary art collection in the new Stieren building, etc.

The best part I enjoyed the most was Ballet Russia theme in the Tobin Theater Arts Gallery. Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan was being told by a spellbinding lady storyteller that both children and adults alike were riveted. In the background were colorful and beautiful murals of the characters of the opera. And right on queue, a violinist and a cellist played the Flight of the Bumblebee!



Worth more than the $0 admission fee! :)

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