San Antonio

For the last 7 years I've been wanting to take the kids to San Antonio.  I know it's not an exotic vacation destination, but for goodness sakes it's only 5 hours away.  There are a lot of fun things to do and it seemed like it would be a good weekend get away.

Last spring I made Chris promise me we would take the kids over Columbus Day.  Cause seriously, if we don't plan things way in advance they won't happen.  With so much family living so close to us we tend to use our long weekends to visit them, which I love, but I wanted to take this trip, so we put it on the calendar.  

We let the kids skip school Friday.  We drove half way Thursday night and then the other half Friday morning.  We pulled into Sea World right before it opened.  I wanted to go to San Antonio in the fall because I figured it wouldn't be so hot and it wouldn't be so crowded.  Both of those things were true, but I have to tell ya, Sea World was still hot.  It was at least 90 degrees that day and we didn't wear our swim suits.  That didn't prevent us from getting totally soaked, though.  

First stop was the sharks and the dolphins.  The kids loved them both.  

They were especially fascinated by the dolphins.  

Then we hit up the children's play area.  I will tell you that there were two drawbacks of this trip.  #1 is that Hudson is kind of at the worst possible age to travel.  He still takes 2 naps and he still NEEDS them, he isn't at a very flexible nap age.  Also, he's too old/stubborn to sleep in a stroller or anything like that.  So Chris and I pretty much wrestled him the whole trip.  He LOVED the splash area though.  Such a happy, wet baby!

We saw Shamu.

There were a couple of water rides open.  Madison, Jaxon and I went on the river ride twice in a row. This was after the first ride.  We were just a little wet.  The second round, though, we got thoroughly soaked.  

All the Halloween decor was up, the kids thought that was fun.  

And here are the 4 tired kids at the end of the day.  According to Chris's pedometer we walked at least 7 miles.  The big kids did awesome.  Very little complaining about feet hurting, etc.   Sea World was fun, but mostly it just made me want to go to Disney, which is 10X better!

We all slept in one big room, which actually went fine.  Hudson shares a room with Madison, so he's used to a little noise at night.  Saturday morning I was trying to get him to nap while Chris took the kids swimming, and he wasn't having it.  First he tried busting out the side.  

Then he tried busting out the top.  What a silly kid!

Saturday we went to Brackenridge Park, which is in downtown San Antonio.  I personally thought it was a pretty cool place!  They have the largest miniature train ride in the country (or something like that) and it's pretty long.  It makes stops around the park at different attractions.  Best part is it only costs about $3 a person, so it's actually reasonable.  

Hudson was super excited to ride with me.   That kid.  Someday he will like taking selfies with his mom!

One of the stops the train makes is at the Whitte Museum.  We have a science museum membership to a museum here in Dallas, which gives us reciprocal admission to museums all over the country, so we got in free!  The kids loved it!

They had a grossology exhibit at the museum, which really was pretty gross, but kind of funny.  This is proof that my kids really are big boogers!

Then Jaxon scaled the skin disease climbing wall.  

And Hudson and Madison played in the digestive system play area, where of course they ended up as giant turds.  Super gross.  And hilarious.  

The kids got to learn to throw spears.  The were thrilled, but I'm grateful we will not be relying on them to kill our food.  

And Hudson got a little cuddly.  Cause he was tired and there was nowhere to sleep.  

Then we took the train to the Japanese Tea Garden, which was built in an old cement quarry.  It was seriously super cool.  The kids loved all the little pathways.  

Here's an awesome pano of the whole thing!

And a great family photo opp!

On the way back to the hotel Hudson had a massive blow out.  Only his shoes survived.  Looking back I now realize that this incident was the beginning of puke-fest 2014.  That night Hudson woke up at 3 a.m. and started throwing up.  While we were all crammed in a tiny hotel room together.  Thankfully ice buckets are great puke buckets.  Sheesh.  He threw up about 4 times between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.  Then he slept, which I was grateful for.  I was also grateful for the fact that the maids would come and bring clean linen, although I felt terrible that they had to deal with the stinky mess, and I left them a good tip. 

Sunday we went to The Alamo.  As Madison said, "It was kind of boring, but I'm glad we went."  I thought it was cool, but from a kids view I know it's not that exciting.  

They did have fun playing in the little tent.  

And playing on the cannons.  The grounds were really pretty.  

And now they call all say that they've been to the Alamo.  

Then we took a cruise on the river walk, which was fun, but I didn't take very many pictures.  Hudson passed out, so that was peaceful, especially since we were all jammed on a boat for 30 minutes.  His night of puking didn't seem to bug him too much, he was a happy guy all day.  The kids said the river tour was their favorite part of the trip.  

Sunday night we went for a dip in the pool.  The kids love swimming in hotel pools and eating hotel breakfast, not that we do it very often, but seriously I think they think that's the most fun part of the trip.  

And here are my three happy little swimmers.  Little do they know what is about to hit them in just a few short hours....

Which brings up to drawback #2 of this trip.  Not that it could have been prevented, but I can honestly say that Monday, October 13 will go down in history as the most terrible road trip our family has taken thus far.  Like I said, Hudson started puke-fest 2014 on Saturday night.  Well 6 a.m. Monday morning Madison started throwing up.  She's only smiling in this picture because I'm teasing her.  

About 45 minutes into our ride home Colton started throwing up.  Thankfully we had the foresight to get foam cups for all the kids so that they would have something "just in case".  Well "just in case" turned out to be 11 times between San Antonio and Dallas.  Every 20-30 minutes Madison or Colton would throw up, we would pull over, dump it out, and keep going.  There was really no alternative we had to get home.  There are very few things so unappetizing as spending an entire day in a small space listening to your children puke.  At one point, after Hudson made a terrible diaper and Chris and I were both gagging in the front seats,  Chris turned to me and said, "This is the road trip from hell."  

Thankfully this was the only use Jaxon got out of his cup on Monday.  But he did throw up Monday night.  And so did I (which means I  had the stomach flu twice in 2 weeks).  Chris got the bug too, but he kept down his lunch.  

Vacations are about family togetherness and I guess you can say we took it one step further.  We laughed together.  We learned together.  We played together.  And we puked together.   

Most definitely we made memories together.