My friend, Tia, and I are both fans of the HGTV show Fixer Upper. I'm actually not much of a TV watcher at all, and HGTV is pretty much the only thing I watch. Even then, I'm pretty picky about what I spend my time watching, so there are just a few shows that I'll really sit and watch. Fixer Upper is one of the shows that makes the cut for me!
Tia and I have taken several trips together through the years, but it's been a while since we've done anything like that. I think our last overnight trip was almost three years ago! After June kicked me in the rear and July didn't start out much better, Tia decided we needed a little get-away and Waco, Texas was just the place for us to go. Magnolia Market was calling our name! (For those of you that may not know, Magnolia Market is a marketplace owned by the stars of Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines.)
We left super early on a Friday morning, and drove about six hours down to Waco. We headed straight to Magnolia Market once we got into town, and we were both pretty shocked when we got there. I think we were expecting it to be pretty low key, but we were wrong! First, it was PACKED OUT with people! There were people there from all over the country.
Standing in front of the famous Magnolia silos
We also thought it was just a couple of silos and a store. Haha, wrong again! There was an entire {huge} courtyard type area of picnic tables, swings, and a field of sorts. Around the perimeter of two sides of this courtyard area were food trucks. We grabbed a super yummy lunch and sat down at a picnic table to soak in our surroundings.
These giant swings looked like so much fun to me!
In another area were more swings with the field area in the background. With the loud, old-fashioned type music playing over a speaker system, people playing catch on the field, cute little dogs running around, and children swinging, it was truly like a scene from a movie. The photos just don't capture the atmosphere!
It was HOT at Magnolia Market, so after visiting the excessively crowded store, we headed to our hotel room. We relaxed for a bit, cooled down, and freshened up. Chris sent me this sweet picture of my girlies and it made me smile :-).
Later that afternoon, we headed back to Magnolia market. We wanted to visit the bakery and try the store again (our hope was that it would be less crowded later in the day). There was a long line for the bakery, but it was worth it!
My vanilla cupcake was so tasty!
After our sweet treat, we were ready to face the store again, ha! It was a little better than it had been earlier in the day, although the crowd was still very large. At least the line to get in wasn't coming out of the door this time!
After a few fun purchases at the store, we headed to Chuy's for dinner. Um. WHY had I never eaten at Chuy's before??? It was delicious!!!
I Facetimed with the big kids before they went to bed, but the twins wouldn't really talk to me. Chris sent me this photo to help me feel better, haha!
The first stop for the day was the Dr. Pepper museum. It was enjoyable, but I'm glad the kids weren't with us. I don't think they would have liked it much.
The museum had a small little gift shop (with a very whomp-whomp employee that I'm pretty sure hated his job), so I bought some Dr. Pepper BBQ sauce. They put it in this brown paper bag for me to carry, and I had to laugh! I sent this pic to Chris and told him we were having a wild time in Waco, lol.
We had kind of skipped breakfast that morning, so we were hungry for lunch as soon as we finished at the Dr. Pepper Museum. We decided on this little hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant where we witnessed a lady hit the building with her Texas-sized truck as we were walking in! Yikes! The food was delicious, although we could have done without the entertainment :-).
After lunch, we wanted to find the historic spot where David Koresh and the Branch Davidians had their compound. We started driving toward the spot (according to internet research) and quickly found ourselves out in the middle of nowhere. It was really kind of creepy, and we wondered why in the world we wanted to find this place, ha! We did finally come to it, but these huge gates were closed with signs saying Private Property. I guess sometimes they're open, but not when we were out there. Oh well, I think we were creeped out enough just driving out there!
So, we headed back into Waco and went by Harp Design Co. Harp Design is owned by a carpenter that Jo uses on Fixer Upper. It was a super cute little house with all kinds of fun things available for purchase (also, CROWDED)!
The final thing on our Waco must-do list was driving around the campus of Baylor University. With my background in working in higher education, college campuses always interest me. It's so intriguing to me how each one has a unique atmosphere and feel.
Baylor was pretty and clean, but to me it felt kind of sterile. It could be that it was the end of July, so students were few and far between . . . I'm not sure. I wasn't too impressed with it, though (sorry to any Baylor Bears out there!)
Around 4:00pm, we said good-bye to Waco and headed for home, but not without one final adventure. We kept seeing all these billboards on the highway advertising the Czech Stop, so of course we had to stop and see what the fuss was about!
The line for the bakery was long and we took that as a good sign. I guess it's long most of the time because they were selling these t-shirts:
I tried my first ever kolache, and it was okay. I actually didn't even finish it. I know, I know . . . I'm no fun.
We also stopped at Bucee's which is this crazy big Texas-sized convenience store and gas station. There's really no way to describe this place unless you've experienced it! It was easily the largest convenience store I have ever seen!
Anyhow, on the way home Chris sent me these precious pics of Brecklyn. I had only been gone for two days, but I was ready to see my little crew!
It was a terrific little get-away, and I'm so glad we did it!
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