The Wade Family Vacation - #3

We've been stung...We've been historic...Now it's time for FUN, at least for the 4 and under crowd!

Day 3 of our vacay found us Sea World Bound!

We arrived shortly after the gates opened - - cashed in our voucher for our free tickets and headed to bag inspection. Bailey thought he needed to take everything out of his backpack piece by piece to show the inspector. I made the mistake of putting my stuff in his bag, too, so I had to intervene quickly before my spare 'drawls' ended up out in the open for everyone to see! Bailey was very proud of his soccer ball underwear. Thankfully the bag checker just smiled.

We made our first bathroom trip, attempted to get acquainted with the map and headed off to see Shamu! The boys enjoyed the show and just sat wide eyed throughout the whole thing.

This is Jenna Beth saying "I want to see Shamu!"

Their favorite part of the day had to be the Shamu Express Rollercoaster! That's all they talked about after they rode it. It's just a little rollercoaster for little kids and Maverick was actually a couple of inches too short, but the nice worker let him ride any way. The park wasn't very crowded so they rode over and over and over! We even had to hit it one last time before we headed to shut the water park down. That's them in the 3rd car from the back in their red shirts. I'm sure they're grinning ear to ear!

We knew we had to end the day with the water park because if we started there, we never would've seen or done anything else! We began at a small splash park and after a little while decided to go check on other things that the boys could do. There was a decent sized slide that Bailey was tall enough to do. As soon as he had his life vest on, he was off - all by himself - to get in line. I think he cut the first time, but daddy intervened to make sure he waited his turn. He rode it over and over and over again!

LT attempted to take Maverick down it and it ended in a catastrophe! Maverick knocked LT's glasses off his face as they landed in the water at the end. I could see it coming a mile away! The glasses were gone for a while and were eventually found - mangled and with a lens missing. This wouldn't be such a big deal, but LT can't see much without them. I'm glad this was the end of the day because I'm not sure I would've wanted to be seen with him wearing his mangled, one lens glasses for the rest of the day!

We started packing it up about the time the water park was closing for the year. Bailey was not happy about that and proceeded let us know his true feelings in quite the undignified way! After clothes were changed, we began our trek back to the car. The children were quite worn out by this point in the day and everyone wanted to be carried. I tried to help the situation by letting Maverick sit on the handles of the stroller, but he's apparently too heavy for this sort of thing and we turned the stroller over with Jenna Beth strapped in it! Thankfully, she unphased by that whole ordeal.

Sea World is so different than when I went there as a middle school or high school kid and thought it was BORING! I don't think the park had been open very long when we went so that might explain some of it.

The Wade Family Vacation - #2

Following the scorpion incident, we were more than happy to just lay around on Saturday. So we did! We spent a good deal of the morning and early afternoon just hanging out watching Disney and college football. We also did our best to settle into our great, new, scorpion free house! In our rush to get everything from one house to the other, we didn't put away our groceries and found our ice cream treats melted on the counter. The expensive ones had to be tossed, but of course the cheapies could be salvaged. Isn't that how it always worked?

Our afternoon plans included the Alamo and a ride on the river and whatever other child friendly entertainment we could come up with. Little did we know, we were choosing to go downtown the same weekend they have some sort of street festival. It wasn't overly crowded, but the kids got balloons handed to them which became a source of frustration and as is always the case with helium balloons, one went sailing into the blue sky never to be held again. Drama!

We knocked the Alamo off first and have our token Alamo pictures.

We didn't go inside and just walked around the outer portions of the building. The males got their pictures taken on a tree right next to a sign that says 'do not climb this tree.' Classic!

I thought I was going to have to fish Bailey out of a coy pond on a few occasions.

You can tell we were really focusing on the history of the Alamo! I'm sure the history teacher in LT came out a few times and he informed the boys of some historical fact, but much like my history classes in school I didn't pay attention or write it down because I knew it wasn't going to show up on a test.

After the Alamo was checked off the list, we went searching for the San Antonio Children's Museum. We started walking the wrong direction and had to turn around. About 100 feet from the entrance to the museum, we were handed our dreadful balloons! The staff at the museum confiscated them from us for our time in the museum. Thankfully, the boys were so distracted by this great interactive ball exhibit that they didn't pay too much attention to the loss of their balloons.

Bailey would've played in the balls the rest of the afternoon, but we at least had to walk around and see what else there was.

We pretended to drive a bull dozer, fly a plane, made big bubbles and various other things. It really is a great kid's museum and had to drag Bailey out kicking and screaming.

Jenna Beth just enjoyed hanging out drinking and watching all the action. She was a super cool trooper for this little excursion!Upon our exit we retrieved our balloons and set off to get dinner and take a ride on the river. Not 2 minutes out the door, Maverick let go of his balloon! Yikes. Good thing Jenna Beth wasn't too concerned about the balloons so we could give hers to him. After watching boats pass by as we ate dinner at Chili's at the Rivercenter Mall, we prepped to board our boat.

We were apparently riding at prime time because we got packed on our little boat like sardines! Everyone enjoyed the ride and were surprisingly quite polite to the boat driver who gave us a history lesson as we rode the river. I don't remember the boat ride being so historic in nature, but I guess the last time I rode a boat, I was a teenager and was probably scoping out the cute guys along the way. And remember, I only pay attention to historical things if it's going to be on a test!

By the end of the ride, we were all pretty pooped and ready to head back to scorpion-free land! After being annoyed by the balloons attached the stroller on our way through the River Center Mall to the parking garage, LT took matters into his own hands and put a hole in one of them before we got in the car. The other was destroyed shortly after getting back to the house.

The Wade Family Vacation - #1

We are currently on our first every family vacation where our main destination wasn't a visit to family, even though that will happen after our 4 days in San Antonio. This trip has been mostly a comedy of errors and wacky events. I told LT the other day that this is very reminiscent of the Griswolds of National Lampoon's Vacation. Thankfully we've not had a relative die and no one's tied a dog to our bumper, yet!

We started off our trip around 7am MST. Within an hour we had already stopped once for snacks and a potty break! An hour or so later, we stopped again at a gas station that was one of those places you only stop if you're desperate! The bathroom was disgusting and the sign over the sink read 'non potable water.' One of my tasks was to clean out JB's bottle, but that didn't happen. We have enough bottled waters with us to last a few weeks so I had to use one of them to rinse out her bottle.

A few hours later on I-10 S our E, we prayed our way into a gas station in Ozona. Ozona is obviously a very small town and the locals can spot a traveller a mile off, or at least across the old fashioned, non pay at the pump gas pumps. The local who talked to LT compared driving 80 mph on I10 to flying! I just laughed inside the car because if we were flying we wouldn't have been at this gas station and I wouldn't be sore from climbing in and out of my seat to help the little people in the bag stay content.

When you rent a house online, all you see is the house, not the houses' surroundings! We pulled into the neighborhood where the house was and it was overgrown with weeds where the builder had obviously not been able to afford to finish the project! There were only about 20 houses complete in the whole neighborhood. It was a little sketchy from my perspective. I've seen a few too many CSI episodes to not think the neighbors knew we were out of towners. I could only think suspiciou thoughts. I know it's terrible, isn't it?

When we opened the door to this house in the incomplete neighborhood, we were greeted by a scorpion! I stepped on it about 10 times to make sure it was dead and then sent it for a swim down the toilet. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be our last encounter with a scorpion! As we were getting the boys to lay down in their room, I went to lay with them for a few minutes. Maverick insisted on laying in the same bed as Bailey so I went and got under the covers of the other twin bed. Within seconds, I was stung by a scorpion. I jumped out of that bed screaming and moving as quickly as I could out of that room. I sat on the couch for a second and noticed a tiny baby scorpion on my sleeve. LT was quickly on the phone negotiating with the property manager and owner to get us out of that house. There's no way I could sleep in that house knowing my babies could be stung by a scorpion. From my very fast scorpion research, I knew a sting to their little bodies could be much more dangerous than one to my big body.

The property manager had another house that we could move into for our stay here. It's much nicer and in a more convenient location. So at 10pm we were packing the car and kids to head to our new house. After arriving at our new house, we realized that LT left his wallet at the other house. So we got the keys to the new house and went back to the old house to get his wallet. In the mean time, my mouth started feeling funny and my lips were tingling. (all symptoms of a scorpion sting) We stopped at a gas station to get some benadryl and that seemed to help. By midnight, we were finally all in bed and nixing our Sea World plans for Saturday.

Believe me, the saga will continue!