Beach Vacation

Before Cooper was born, I started talking to Keith about the possibility of us going on a little family trip when he was a few months old. We haven't just taken a vacation since our honeymoon. Our trips have all been to Indiana to visit my family, which is great, but we want to start doing family vacations too.

For the past several months, Garrett has been asking to go to the beach. He was desperate to build a sand castle like he saw Curious George do on his show one day. So we made the decision to go to Galveston once Cooper was around 3 months old. We figured he would be sleeping through the night by that point (he is) and a little easier to take out (he is).

My family used to live about 45 minutes from Galveston, so I am familiar with the area and my brother and sister in law still live down there. It was fun to go back after several years and see the changes to the area. The saddest part for me was seeing the destruction still evident from Hurricane Ike a year later.

We left Friday morning around 9:00. After a detour not more than 20 minutes away from our house and then a poopy diaper that we had to stop and change, we were a little behind the schedule I had in my mind. But if I've learned nothing from being a mom it's that I have to be flexible, even though that is a huge challenge for me! So rather than making it to Huntsville (which is about halfway to our destination) we only made it to Centerville before it was time for Cooper to eat. Since it was lunchtime too, Keith and Garrett went into Jack in the Box to eat lunch while I fed Cooper in the car. He was more than hysterical at this point so I needed to stay there to try and calm him down before he would take his bottle. After a diaper change, a bathroom break, and grabbing myself something to eat in the car, we got back onto the interstate. Thankfully Cooper went to sleep and slept until about halfway through Houston. At this point he was totally done with being in the carseat. Neither of my boys have liked their infant carseat. It's very frustrating for me because I can't be *that* mom who just takes her baby in the seat everywhere I go and they sit there contentedly.

So I climbed into the backseat and sat between Garrett and Cooper for the rest of the trip. That seemed to help some, but he still was not happy with me. Instead of going straight to Galveston, to our hotel, we stopped at my brother's house for a visit. They bought a house a few months ago and we hadn't been down to see it yet, so it was fun to visit with them and see their first home. And meet their new puppy that they bought the night before. He was a cutie!

Brad and Cooper in the living room of his new house
The new puppy, Bear. He's only 7 weeks old!

After visiting with Brad and Kristen and admiring their house, we all went to eat Mexican food for supper. I'm of the opinion that Mexican food gets better the further south you go. This meal totally proved that theory.

When we were done eating and visiting, we left and headed for our hotel. It was about 45 minutes away, but the route to get us there is nice. We drove right along the coast enjoying the beach. We also noted several parts of the road that were newly re-done due to Hurricane Ike washing out the original road. Some of the houses along this route looked brand new, or newly repaired. Others looked as if no one had touched them since Ike a year ago. I feel badly for those families, even though they did choose to live on the beach and therefore have a high chance of a hurricane or tropical storm damaging their home. I choose to live in Texas, therefore I have a high probability of my house getting hit by a tornado. And it did 5 years ago. So you never know what will happen when weather is involved.

We arrived at our hotel, got checked in and settled down for the night.

After eating a yummy hotel breakfast the next morning (thank goodness the continental breakfast is going the way of the dinosaurs! I enjoy a good omelet, sausage, biscuits and gravy for free at my hotel.), we headed to the beach.

After the beach, we went to a miniature golf course that sits across the street from the beach. Garrett loves to play Wii golf, so we thought he might enjoy mini golf. I guess he did, but it was hard to tell amidst the tantrums because a)his ball didn't go where he wanted it to, b)Momma or Daddy happened to hit the ball better than he did, or c)he didn't get a "chip-in". (I totally got a hole-in-one on the first hole! Of course this was the easy course for kids, but still...) Keith and I ended up alternating who would actually putt on each hole because we were also holding Cooper and Garrett was whizzing through the holes so we didn't want to drag him down by insisting we take the time for all 3 of us to have our turn. And there was a couple playing a few holes behind us. If we took too long, they would eventually need to play through. I wasn't sure if Garrett could handle that at this point. Trust me, when Cooper is older and doesn't require being held, we will play a real game of mini golf, following the rules, keeping score, and everything. I told Keith that was the fastest 18 holes of golf ever played. Garrett was not happy that he had to putt his ball into the final hole where it didn't come back. It didn't help that the ball didn't actually make it to the hole, but was behind a gate where he couldn't reach it, but could still see it.

Saturday afternoon we toured "The Bishop's Palace". You can google it if you're interested, but a brief rundown is this:

A railroad tycoon built this house in the late 1800's. It took him 5 years and $250k to build it. It has SO much detail. The walls in one bedroom? Not wallpaper, hand-stenciled! Every room had a fireplace with each being from a different country. The stained glass windows were shipped from Germany. The walls (interior and exterior) are at least 2 feet thick and made of concrete. When this house was complete it had indoor plumbing, electricity and gas, phone, pretty much everything minus air-conditioning. And the guy did his best with that. The stairwell is 50 feet tall with the dome being able to open in order to release the hot air that would rise up in the heat of the day. When the hurricane of 1900 hit Galveston, killing more than 6,000 people and almost leveling the island, this house only had 6 feet of water in the basement and 2 broken windows. When Ike hit last year, they had 3 feet of water in the basement and 1 broken window. I'm fascinated by things like this. The vase on the mantel in the parlor was dated from the 1500's!! Can you imagine everything that vase could tell us about if it could talk? You're not allowed to take pictures inside this house, so we only have a couple that we took in the basement. You can kind of see how thick the walls are in these pictures.

When we were deciding where to go for lunch, we knew we wanted seafood. How can you go to the beach and not eat seafood? I asked the hotel for a good recommendation so we headed there. Obviously it's a popular place because there was not one available table, so we left to find somewhere else to eat. Brad had told me about Fishtales, so we went there. It wasn't cheap food, but it was really good and not crowded so that was a plus. During our tours around the island, we drove by this house. It's not a good shot, I apologize, but Keith said he thought it looked like a Miami Vice house. It was pretty cool.

If you ever been to Galveston, then you've probably seen the Flagship Hotel. It's a hotel that sits out on piers in the gulf. Unfortunately, this hotel sustained damage from Hurricane Ike. Here's a few pictures that we took. The restaurant where we had lunch sat directly across the street from this hotel, so that was where I took some of these pictures. In this picture, you can make out a TV and bed inside the hotel rooms. Keith said if they ever repair this hotel, he wants to come back to Galveston and stay there. Preferably not during hurricane season.

Most of the piers going out from the seawall into the gulf were completely destroyed. This one is still somewhat intact, but the part that boggled my mind is the fact that this truck was washed out onto the pier and still sits there today. Anyone missing their truck? I think I found it.
A direct shot.
If you watched any of the Ike coverage, then you saw the shots of all the boats that had washed up onto Interstate 45 as you're leaving Galveston and heading north towards Houston. Here are some of those boats still sitting on the side of the interstate a good ways away from any water. Can you imagine living in one of those houses and having someone's boat sitting in your backyard?

Garrett and I also swam in the hotel pool on Saturday. He LOVED it and was a total fish, even accidentally going under a few times didn't bother him one bit. For supper we decided to stay in and order pizza. The day had been a long and busy one for all of us and the boys really needed to get to bed early. Madagascar 2 was on one of the cable channels so that kept Garrett happy.

The drive home was much easier than the drive there. I just road in the back from the start and then I was able to stop the screaming before it started, for the most part.

We had a great time on our trip. I will admit to being happy to be home once it was over though. It's mentally and physically exhausting to travel with a small baby. I know I'll enjoy our vacations in the future when he's a little older and doesn't require so much "stuff" and attention.