Vacation 2011 Part 2

Part 1 left off on a high note – Steve and I sitting by the fire on the beach listening to the waves and holding hands. Aww. The night went downhill from there. We went into the tent, where 3 children were supposed to be sleeping. There was much tossing and turning and a bit of sitting up and talking and playing. And not as much sleeping as I had hoped for. Then Steve and I laid down. You see, usually we take an air mattress when we camp, but on this trip we did did not bring it for 2 reasons: a) We were packing light so that we could fit everything in the car. This was a long trip, with lots of stops and we needed a ton of stuff, so packing light was important and b) We figured “We’re sleeping on SAND! Sand is soft, right?” Well, turns out all the walking around in the tent we did when setting up the sleeping bags, sweeping all the sand out of the tent, putting the kids to bed etc., left the sand under our tent quite hard-packed. Around 3am, I asked my wide-awake husband for the time and found that time had STOPPED MOVING. I was hoping it was almost morning and I could just get up and be done trying to sleep. So, I did the responsible thing and helped my family the best I knew how. I moved to the truck and passed out in the front seat. It was a selfless move because if I was too tired to even be nice the next day, the vacation was going to stop being fun for everyone very quickly. I’ve never been so thankful that Steve insisted on finding a Ford Expedition with a front bench seat. I got a good 4 hours of sleep after that. Steve also slept better once my tossing and turning and whining was gone. And the kids – they can sleep anywhere. So around 7am, Steve scared the living daylights out of me by knocking on the car window to wake me up. Pretty much the most confused I’ve ever been.

We got up, packed up the tent, and quickly gave up on keeping the sand out of the car or keeping the sand off of anything. As with when we arrived, it took us FOREVER to maneuver our front wheel drive truck in the sand. It was a careful system of driving forward to get momentum, backing up, getting out and digging the sand out from around the sunken tires, then repeating. Many times. We left the beach feeling gritty and sweaty and stinky and gross. I’ve never wanted a shower more in my entire life. But all of our searching for a shower house was in vain and we finally gave up on the idea of personal hygiene. It was around 9am when we left our campsite and we could not check into our condo (where we’d be spending the next 2 nights) until 2pm. We begrudgedly drove into Port Aransas to kill time for 5 hours and ended up having a wonderful time. We stopped at a long pier and had a picnic breakfast and walked up and down the pier. That’s when I noticed Gabby’s hair.

I quickly gave my dirty haired little girl some pony tails and then we then went into a few cute surf shops and browsed the overpriced clothes. The fun level really picked up when we rented Bevo, the UT Buggie. We drove it up and down the beach and through Port Aransas. We went out to lunch and picked up some groceries for our condo stay.

We were so excited to finally check into our condo. While I unpacked and finally got my shower, Steve opted to take Steven and Gabby down to the pool. Then I made us a home cooked dinner for the first time all week. It was great. We hit up the pool a little after dinner and then everyone got cleaned up and we played cards. Our time in the condo couldn’t have been better. We spent most of our time at the pool, ate home cooked meals and walked past the pool out to the beach once. I got attacked by THESE little boogers and that ended my attraction to the ocean. Thankfully, I didn’t get much of a rash, and even more thankfully I was holding Gabby when I got attacked and she didn’t get any at all. Just me. Because I’m special. Because I’ve never swam in the Gulf Coast without being stung by something.

The view from our balcony, the ocean in the background

Our 3 days in the condo ended all too soon. We packed it up and hit the road again and drove up to Randolph AFB for the night. We stayed in TLF and drove around the base and surrounding area a bit. We lived at Randolph AFB for a little over a year back in 2008-2009 and it was fun to go back and eat at our favorite sub shop and go to a Target that doesn’t reek of fish (Is it just me? Does anyone else smell that horrible stink in the Abilene Target?) and Steve even took me into Best Buy there and bought me this nice new laptop that I’m blogging from right now. My 4-year-old Dell just wasn’t cutting it anymore. And by cutting it, I mean going 20 minutes without crashing.

The next morning, we got up and around lazily and got to Sea World around 10:30. We were out of there by 3:00. We saw the shows, tried unsuccessfully to put the kids on a kiddy-ride and then we were out. We are thankful for our free yearly tickets because we can go for just a few hours and then leave without feeling like we wasted money.

After Sea World, we headed back to Abilene. After a wonderful week of fun in the sun in beautiful 90 degree days, it was a big wake up call to drive into the dry 106 degrees of Abilene. But it was good to sleep in our own beds.

We made some pretty wonderful family memories during our week and are so thankful to the Lord that Steve is here with us and that we had that time to bond with him again. God has blessed our family so, so much and we are just thankful to have had that time to just be in His rest and love and enjoy His gifts.

And now, you’re all caught up!