Our Texas Adventure...Day One

This past Monday morning, we pulled up to John's Aunt Cindy & Uncle Charles' house (aka: McMansion) in San Antonio at 8:00 (11 hours after we left our house).

We unpacked the car, threw on our swimsuits, and went swimming in the neighborhood pool.  It had this super cool kiddie pool!

Grace loved the water slide!

Carter was just taking it all in.

This pool was so nice and we had it all to ourselves for about 3 hours.

We spent a lot of time on the lazy river.  Although, I'm not sure how "lazy" it was with 2 kiddos.

Carter just chilled...'cause he's cool like that!

We had a fantastic time at the pool and wished we could have spent more time there.

But, we all needed naps!

After some much needed rest, we had dinner at 54th Street Grill.  It was a pretty cool place...there were race cars, helicopters, traffic lights, and elephants hanging from the ceiling.  They also had some yummy food!

Then, we went back to bed.  'Cause the next day we were going to SeaWorld!!!

InstaMonday?!?

Here are my weekly iPhone pics...

We made some yummy chocolate chip cookies!

I love these two so much!

Last weekend, we saw a couple of rainbows and Grace was so excited about it!

I HATE packing and I had so much to do to get ready for our trip to Texas.

I finally finished packing and we loaded up our "new ride" (thanks, Grandpa!!!)...

...and we hit the road!  Our first stop was San Antonio!

We drove through the night, hoping our kids would sleep through most of the 12 hour drive.  We made it to Dallas by 3 a.m. and John was going strong!

 We made it to San Antonio by 8 in the morning and we swam and took some long naps!  We ate dinner at 54th Street Grill and it was super yummy!

The next morning, we headed to...

...SeaWorld!  It was so much fun!

After a few days in San Antonio, we went to the outlets in San Marcos.  They had the biggest outlets EVER.  It was huge!!!  Of course, we had to stop here!

Anyone need a couch?

Carter needed a break from shopping.

We ate at Whataburger for lunch and Grace ate an entire burger!  She was hungry!

We loaded the car back up and headed to our next stop.

Dallas!

In Dallas, we went to Ikea and it was awesome!!!

They even gave us a free lunch!  Oh, and if that wasn't awesome enough...they had Mountain Dew there!!!  I'm in love!

Grace got to eat candy at 9:00 at night...oh my!

Our third stop was Kilgore/Longview to visit with some family.  I went until around 8:30 pm without a single drop of Mountain Dew...I can't believe I survived the day.  But, that was the best drink I have ever had EVER!

After seeing some family, we headed home.

Look at my handsome lunch dates!

Poor thing!  She slept like this for hours on the way home.  So sad!

Now, it is my last week of summer break and I am kinda bummed!  I would love another week or two.  I still have so much that I want/need to do before school starts back.  First, I need to do about 15 loads of laundry...ugh!

my big backyard and the giant man eating fish

We met Steph and the boys at the Botanic Garden on a drizzly, humid morning.  

We headed straight to My Big Backyard to go exploring and to play!

First, we played in CANDYplantLAND,

Grace and Tripp went swinging inside a chrysalis.

We were beginning to get pretty wet at this point, so we took cover played in this hobbit house for a while.

When the rain stopped for a second, we explored the pond.

And then it was back to taking cover and playing in all the cool playhouses!

Once the rain stopped for real, the kids and John built a "fort."

Grace practiced her balancing skills on this tree trunk beam.

momma bird and her babies

We had a visitor in our nest...sweet Drew!

Better watch out, Carter's at the wheel!

Then we played in a thunderstorm at Raindrop Stop.  This probably would have been cooler if we weren't already playing in the rain!

We finished our explorations in the Japanese Garden.  This was definitely our most memorable adventure of the day.

So, we were feeding these koi and we were all pretty amazed and kinda grossed out at them.  There were so many and they are big and loud! I wondered what would of happened if Carter fell in...not sure and glad I didn't find out!  Six out of seven of us (Charlie was safely strapped in his stroller) were standing there watching the fish and John threw some food in.  I'm not sure what happened, but the next thing I know is we all screamed!  Kids were crying and Carter had been knocked down and the front half of his body was soaking wet!  It was pretty intense and funny!  

We headed to higher ground!  The fish can't get us up here...I hope!

It was a fun day and we will be going back on a drier day.

Oh yeah, and Batman was there!