What Bluebonnets?

Friday afternoon we decided to take a roadtrip with some friends to the little town of Burnet, Texas. This is about an hour drive from where we live in Hutto. I had heard that Highway 29 from Austin to Burnet and Llano was suppose to have some of the prettiest bluebonnet displays in the state. The Bluebonnet Festival was going on in Burnet starting Friday and that is why we decide to take our road trip because I look forward to bluebonnet pictures every year. So I got my kiddos all decked out in cute WHITE outfits and loaded up the van. The trip there was torture as Peyton has decided she doesn't like riding in her car seat again for some reason and cried or screamed almost the entire hour there. The friends who were following us are new friends so I resisted the urge to pull over on the side of the highway and beat her. I didn't want them to think I was crazy or ever have them be fearful of me watching their kids so I tried to tune her out with the radio. My poor mom was riding with me and I'm sure she was wondering why I wasn't taking care of the situation. Either that or she was laughing inside thinking there is justice in the world after all (I supposedly was a little bit difficult the first half of my life!) Either way, we finally made it to Burnet. I expected to see signs everywhere for this festival but that wasn't the case. So I stopped at a gas station to ask directions and was surprised to find out the owner had no idea what I was talking about. So, I asked the least scary looking motorcycle man filling his tank outside and he told me to turn around and go back 3 blocks. Hmmm....no signs for what is suppose to be the biggest event in their town all year. How good of a festival is this going to be???
After driving around a little while, we found a small fenced off section of streets downtown and that was the festival. Mainly a bunch of vendor booths with all kinds of overpriced goodies. The carnival wasn't open yet so that was a bummer. So, we drove all that way to sit and have lunch at a little cafe in the town square. I did enjoy visiting with our friends and Peyton managed to behave during our little lunch. It dawned on me though that I didn't see any bluebonnets on the highway on the way there. We all wondered where the heck we were going to take our pictures. That was my main goal for this trip. Surely there was some hidden majestic field around there that we hadn't discovered yet! I asked the local security guy and he told me the bad news that we didn't get enough rain this year and there weren't any pretty bluebonnets anywhere around Burnet. Well, that is just great I thought to myself...not that it mattered since Peyton's dress was no longer white and pretty after lunch. On that note, we decided to load up and head home. Peyton was tired enough that she feel asleep 15 minutes into the drive so we had some blissful quiet on the way back to Hutto. I hate feeling disappointed and defeated when I've spent time and energy planning something and then it doesn't work out. That's the kid in me that pouts when things don't go according to MY plan. That is the only reason I decided to take my cranky and exhausted children to a park 10 minutes up the road from home to see if they had any small patches of bluebonnets to take a least one picture! So before we went home from our road trip we stopped at Settler's Park and managed to find a small field with a few bluebonnets. How much easier the day would have been if we had just done that first instead of trying to drive an hour somewhere to get the best pictures! The pictures above are definately not wonderful, but hey, you can't see the stains on Peyton's dress and at least neither of them is crying! Maybe we'll get enough rain next year to have the "magical fields of bluebonnets"! I don't think I'll be going back to Burnet though!