Crazy is the New Normal: Galveston 2013, Part One

Well we just returned from a fantastic family vacation! I can't even tell you how glad we were to get away, having not been able to go on one last summer. Plus, all of Christiaan's family was actually able to come this year. We took my mom as well, since she hasn't been on a vacation in four years. I wanted her to have good memories of Galveston, since the last two trips there were stressful and didn't leave good memories.

I made it a point to take a bazillion pictures every day, and then wrote out everything we did each day, since it was a 6 day trip! I'm going to break it up in a couple posts so as not to overwhelm myself.

Day One, Sunday

Mom spent the night Saturday night so that when Christiaan got off work at 7 we could load up and hit the road ASAP. For reasons that I don't quite understand, no matter how many times my normally calm natured husband has loaded the back end of his truck for a trip, he still loses his cool while doing it. I have learned to stay out of his way, and he always fits everything into it like a puzzle piece eventually!

We drove thru McDonalds for breakfast and were on the highway by 9am. I drove until just south of Houston so that Christiaan could sleep some. Mom was on kid entertainment duty in the backseat. We stopped at Bucee's, but otherwise the trip was pretty smooth sailing. Oh, except for just before Bucee's, the passenger side air started blowing hot, like the heater was on, and we couldn't figure out why. Google offered a range of reasons why, but thankfully after sitting in the driveway a few hours it worked again. We made it to the beach house in Sea Isle around 3pm, where our family had already arrived and unpacked. The house was just as perfect as we had thought the pictures looked, and we could see the ocean(aka Gulf of Mexico, but who's counting??)from the porch through the houses across the street. After we unloaded we took the kids to see the water and walk around on the beach before dinner. Carter couldn't help but go crazy in the water, despite being fully clothed, and so after dinner I put his suit on and took him back for a quick swim.

Our countdown was over!

Mom got brave and offered her assistance

Apologies to Mom for my stellar photography skills

Mom busted out the metal detector right away

Jazzy already making sandcastles

The second we hit humidity D's hair went bonkers!

Sister's first dip in the ocean!

She was intrigued by the waves

Note the shirt....

Day two, Monday

After yummy breakfast, we all decided it was to be a beach day. By the time everyone got ready to go though, Delaney was ready to nap, so I stayed back at the house with her. We headed out after she woke up though and spent a good while there. Eventually the kids were getting hungry so we ran back to the house to eat lunch, then drove to the community pool. It seems ludicrous to swim in a pool when you have the beach across the street, but it is nice to rinse off the sand and then get into a chlorinated pool! After we were all exhausted and done with water sports for the day, we went back to the house to enjoy a yummy fajita dinner that Jason and Edna made. Except that Jason was making homemade salsa verde and in doing so managed to essentially pepper spray the whole house by roasting the jalepenos on the stove! That was a new one! At dark, the guys went to the pier to fish, we took the kids to the neighborhood park and then visited the pier. Where I caught the one and only fish I did the whole trip. And we had to throw it back. So, we had better make use of my $47 fishing license the rest of the year!