Happy Birthday to Ian!
His real birthday was February 15th, and he got a homemade chocolate cake. And apparently if you are eating fancy chocolate cake, it calls for a new hairdo. No, Ian is not driving yet. He has to put it 6 hours or so studying this booklet prior to even applying for a learner's permit. He also hasn't been overly anxious to start driving, but we will get him going on it soon enough.
For his official celebration, he asked to attend a book signing event in San Antonio. Brandon Sanderson is one of Ian's favorite authors, and he is currently on a tour promoting Calamity. He was scheduled to be in San Antonio the evening of February 26th. Since Del Rio has no bookstore (GASP! I know, can you believe it???), and we are a family of readers, how could we not grant his request? Also, Kevin does not teach any classes on Fridays, so he was free to come with us.
We arrived around lunchtime, went to Barnes and Noble to purchase some books and get a ticket for the signing line, stopped at the Scout Store to get Ian a new shirt since he keeps growing on us, and then experienced a real Texan BBQ at the Barbecue Station. Dallin ate bread and chips. The rest of us ate BBQ chicken, turkey, brisket, pork, beans, and potato salad along with our bread.
Following lunch, we stopped at the historic Alamo. Remember that from history classes?
We still had an hour to kill before going to the book signing, so we drove south a few miles and took a walk along the famous River Walk. We walked from a park to the Concepcion Mission, but due to the trailside map not being to scale, we misjudged distance (what appeared to be about .5 miles was actually 1.5 miles) and didn't have enough time to actually go inside that mission.
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| Our starting point along the River Walk-- it actually goes for many miles and is popular with bikers and joggers. |
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| Ian holding the Tower of the Americas, which is an attraction for another visit |
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| The San Antonio River |
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| Cormorants |
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| We look forward to visiting this on another trip. |
We found our way back to Barnes and Noble without getting lost and made it on time. Brandon began with a short talk, a Q & A session, then read a chapter from the not-yet-released third book in his Stormlight Archive.
Then they called up patrons by ticket letters--Ian had letter "E" so we amused ourselves by looking at the Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and wondered why Megan had not yet requested it for one of her birthday presents. Erin and Dallin hung out in the children's section the entire time and had a blast reading whatever they wanted. It was better than our small library in Del Rio.
Brandon took time with each fan, answering more questions, joking around, and personalizing messages in their books. We were surprised by the diversity of people who came to the event--all ages from elementary school kids to older adults.
We finished by 9:30 and had a quiet 3-hour return drive arriving home at 12:30 AM.
