Mother nature tried to spoil our three-day weekend in Austin. It rained off and on continuously, and the temperature ranged from the 40’s to the 80’s. One minute it was cold and damp, and the next minute we were under a tornado watch. The mornings were wet and soggy, while evenings were punctuated with light shows and thunder.

Weekends like this do make it a challenge to seek food related adventures, but it certainly takes more than inclement weather to keep the PlayGourmets from burning through that high number of calories we so boastfully consume.

As soon as the rain lets up for a moment, our little PlayGourmet already has his helmet on, and is ready to take to the hills. Mom transforms into an olympic sprinter as she is motivated by visions of epic crashes.

Every down hill race is capped off with a sprint to the finish.

Or in this case a sprint to some corn chowder, tomato soup, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Our little PlayGourmet innately knows to dip his grilled cheese into his tomato soup. He really makes his parents proud.

And lets not forget that the weekend is not lost having to spend time inside when the NFL Playoffs are in full swing.

After another brief respite from the rain, we trek out to Town Lake. Time to get another run in, before finding some more mud and puddles to play in.

We haven’t mentioned all the fun the dog gets to have when the ground turns into a large natural slip-n-slide.

But luckily for all of us, he can rinse himself in the lake.

Now it is mud and puddle time!

It was a full weekend, not a ton of food adventures this time around, but we still managed to keep it interesting.

The perfect way to close this weekend is with a movie and some popcorn. The boy and his mom have popcorn every night. They find it to be a light and delicious snack that satisfies them in those hours between dinner and bed.

Our little PlayGourmet is an expert at preparing our nightly snack. After he pulls a chair up to the counter, he measures the kernels and pours them into the air popper.

Once the popper stops popping, he usually trusts his dear ol’ dad to apply some olive oil, sea salt, pepper.

That’s it. Nothing too complicated here.