Galveston 2012! Part I...

We were all sooooooooooo excited to take a trip to the beach as a family this summer.  This is the stuff memories are made of! We had a surprisingly good time...I was prepared for the worst (just in case!) and hoped for the best, and the trip ended leaving us all wanting more. 

We made the drive successfully and without incident.  It did take about an hour longer than we planned for but that's not bad considering, and now we know to wait a short while after Joseph says he needs to go to the bathroom before we actually pull off the highway.  Because sometimes when you pull over, it turns out he may not actually need to go.

 

We drove into town ready for dinner and tried out the only Galveston restaurant over the water.  The kids loved watching the ocean while we ate and Josh and I enjoyed our first vacation breaths of that wonderful ocean smell...and let the city and daily stress melt away.

At our condo, we weren't directly on the ocean but still had a wonderful view!  Our condo was beautiful and newly renovated with beautiful finishes and was decorated like a page out of a catalog.

I was really surprised that there was enough light from the moon to capture this beautiful shot!  We spent our evenings after the kids were in bed on our huge patio.

On the night that I took the moon pictures, we sat and sipped our drinks and each had our iphones out googling Galveston.  We talked and shared the history of the city with each other and I was surprised to find out that before the "Big Hurricane" of 1900, Galveston was considered to be the Wall Street of the South!  It was a huge part of the country's economy and was rich with both money and culture.  Who knew?  We shared the history of the storms that have hit the island and it fascinates me how devastating it can be.  Of course there were beaucoup of images online and it's amazing how the city has rebuilt and recovered after being destroyed.    

The next morning we hit the pool before Alaina's nap time.  This was her first dip in a pool!  It took her several minutes to get used to it, then she floated around with us like second nature.  They had a great pool and what was even better (only because we happen to have a four year old boy) was that there was a construction site just feet away from the pool!  We got to watch dump trucks, diggers and the whole nine yards while we swam.  Good thing that our unit was on the other end of the building though, or it really wouldn't have been cool at all. 

 

The beach was typical Galveston...brownish sand and mountains of seaweed...and completely fabulous to this family.  We even learned the coolest trick from our beach neighbors when I saw them shaking the heck out of seaweed over and over.  When I started chatting with them, they told us that you can shake out all kinds of stuff hiding out in there!  We started shaking our own seaweed and found all kinds of little mini shrimp, fish, and softshell crab.  They even had a little tiny blowfish in theirs!  Joseph especially loved hunting for crabs and dug a little tidepool to play with them.  Josh and Joseph could have hunted for them all day. 

Both of the kids loved the sand and surf.  It took Joseph just a while to get the hang of how the waves worked, but once Josh showed him how to turn sideways to cut the wave, and to jump the small ones, he was a pro.  We ended up with sand in every nook and cranny but is it really the full experience without it?!

Our condo had a dining table nook with a bed above it.  It was very innovative!  No one slept up there this time, but Joseph had a blast playing and hanging out on the bed during the day.  It's not everyday you get to drive your cars on the ceiling! 

Vacation makes us happy!

Another view from our living room window.

We took a big canopy/tent for some shelter from the sun.  It was a total pain and piece of poop though, and after setting it up the first day - I about wanted to set it on fire.  We popped in to Academy on the Seawall and purchased a new one that was a pop-up variety.  It was still very cumbersome but oh so worth it.  

The first day on the beach when Alaina would wander out from under our shelter, I must have looked like a fool following her around with an umbrella so she wouldn't get too much sun.  Even with her swim shirt on, I was a mess thinking she was going to get burned.  The umbrella made me feel better and if anyone laughed, I just kicked sand at 'em.  

Sweet Joseph ran and ran and ran and kicked water and built sandcastles and ran some more and laughed and had so much fun.  It was really worth all the packing and long drive, and "sight-seeing" in the truck so Alaina could nap cause she couldn't settle down in a new place for nap time, and the stomping overhead in our condo from the neighbors at all hours of the night and day, and the airport landing strip a few miles behind our building, and sand in my nook and especially in my cranny, and the uncountable applications of sunscreen...to see Joseph at the big wide ocean for the first time.

Then on our last day, we realized we didn't have a picture of all of us on the beach.  After we loaded the truck we headed back to the beach one last time to snap a quick shot, take in the salty air and say goodbye.  Gosh, am I getting a little misty eyed writing this?  Just when I didn't think I was quite far enough out from this trip to be ready for another one, I think I might be wishing we were there again.