Friends

During my college years at Texas A&M I made the best friends.  The kind of friends that you don't see for a long time and when you do see each other you can pick up on your conversation just like it was yesterday.  The kind of friends that you would drive miles and miles to see even if it was just for a few minutes.

Today two of these friends came to Brenham to visit.  I had been looking forward to this day for weeks, maybe even months.  We had seen each other at birthday parties for our children, but you know that no one can actually visit well at a birthday party, because the host is always busy and has lots on their mind and several people to visit with.  So I was looking forward to today because no one had to host a party or visit with others.  We could just sit and enjoy one another's company.

Did I mention we have kids?  What was I thinking!?  With kids you can't just sit and enjoy one another's company.  For example, we were talking for only a few minutes when all of a sudden I see two little people run past the window outside.  Wait!  How and when did they go outside!?  It really wasn't a big deal, because we live out in the country and my kids know the boundaries and have lots of space to roam.  But you get the point.  There's never time to just sit and talk.

Don't get me wrong.  I absolutely adore my children and my friends' children.  I whole heartedly believe the we all have made the most adorable children in the world.  But I do miss the days when it was just us girls sitting around the dinner table talking without a care in the world.

Today we went to eat at Los Cabos for lunch and there were a total of 10 of us!  We were almost outnumbered by kids, but we had two of our mommies join us for lunch so it was a one to one ratio for adults to kids.  If those two mommies wouldn't have been there then it was have been 3 adults and 5 kids.  I have to give our kids kudos because they were awesome in the restaurant.  I felt so special sitting at this huge table with my friends and all the kids.  I always wanted to have a large family and I think today is the closest I'll get to it, but it was an amazing feeling to be part of such a big and great group of kids and mommies right smack dab in the middle of the restaurant for all to see.

Then we went to Horseshoe Junction to play Mini Bowling and ride the Bumper Boats.  Mini Bowling was a bit different than we expected, but after a few tries the kids got the hang of it.  The bowling balls were like huge heavy marbles.  When they hit the floor, they made a loud noise and you would have thought that we busted a hole in the floor.  Brazos had a hilarious technique for bowling.  He would stretch his arm back to get as much force as he could to push the ball, and then once he brought his arm down he gently pushed the ball down the lane.  More than once his ball didn't even make it to the pins and he would have to walk down the lane to get the ball and try again.  All the kids had a blast and they were too cute to watch.

We all forgot that the bumper boats have squirters, so I'm sure you can imagine how we exited the ride.  WET!  We weren't exactly planning on getting wet today.  Brazos rode with his little friend Emma and I wish I could have taken their picture together in the boat, but for sake of not destroying the camera with water, it'll just have to be a mental memory.

Today was what I needed.  I needed to see my friends.  I needed to see my kids playing with my friends' kids.  If I could write my kids' futures it would be something like a teenage Brazos telling me, "Hey mom, Holden and I are going fishing the weekend.  See ya later!"  Or maybe Brazos and Emma would want to go dancing together with all their friends on the weekend.  Maybe Sandy would be a cheerleader for our hometown and when they played against Andrew's hometown, she would be secretly cheering for Andrew to make a touchdown.  I really want our kids to grow up knowing that they can be great friends just like their mommies.  I want them to know that friends can come from all over and you can easily go visit them when you need some friend time.  Maybe Brazos will take Emma to Prom one day.  You never know.  All I know is that I want them to have great people in their lives and this is definitely a group of great people. 

Shelley and Alaina, I love you.  Emma, Andrew, and Holden, I adore you.  My kids adore you and had a blast today...................but can you tell me why Sandy is not sleeping!!!! 

Thank you for a great day everyone, and Sandy please take a nap {so I can secretly eat my York Peppermint Patty}! ;)

Family Vacation {Day 3}

     Three days is about all this little family can take for a vacation.  Brazos and Sandy hate being cooped up in the car traveling and staying away from home just gets expensive fast.  Our initial plan was to head home with a stop at NASA Space Center on the way, but after seeing an advertisement for the Annual Sandcastle Competition on Galveston Beach, we decided that we weren't quite done with the island after all.

     We packed up our belongings and checked out of the hotel in the morning and drove to NASA Space Center in Clear Lake.  The kids really enjoyed the space center because it has a GIANT play structure inside that is completely safe for little ones to venture all the way up to the top without parents worrying about them falling.  For the little ones like Sandy there is an area on the bottom with balls flying everywhere to keep them occupied while big brothers like Brazos climb up to the top.  Parents can climb in to and I had so much fun climbing to the top and sliding down the two story slide!

     The kids were kind-of-sort-of interested in the space exhibits.  Anything that was hands on was great, but just walking around looking at space suits didn't exactly capture their attention.  We went on one of the two tour bus rides that are available to see a BIG space ship in another building.  The ride itself wasn't very pleasurable because Sandy was screaming at the top of her lungs, but seeing the BIG space ship was worth it.  We could have skipped the other parts of the tour, but you have to stay with the group, which is only reasonable.

     The space center had an exhibit called CHOMP! which all about reptiles.  Every few hours a young girl and her assistant would do a show with different reptiles such as turtles, snakes, alligators, and lizards.  At the end of the show kids can hold a baby alligator and Brazos was so brave and went up there all by himself to hold it!

This isn't the BIG space ship.  The other one is so big and you are standing right next to it that I couldn't even fit it in my camera, so I don't have a picture of it.

     Of course we didn't want to miss the sandcastle competition, so we drove back to Galveston to go check out the local artwork.  We didn't get to see them build the castles.  We only saw the finished products.  The crazy part is that we ran into a high school classmate, Kyle Priesmeyer, while browsing through the crowd and he was on one of the teams that built the castles!  He told us that he had been part of the competition for eight years.  He explained to us how the competition works and how they build the castles.  Here's what I remember:

• It's some architecture association that puts on the competition, so a lot of the contestants are architects.
• They don't practice building the castles beforehand.
• They aren't allowed to use pumps to get water to the sand.  I think it had to all be carried by buckets, no powered machines.
• They are given themed categories to compete in.
• Each team has between 4-8 people to help build.
• They make a drawing of their castle beforehand.
• They bring U-Haul trailers full of cardboard and wooden forms to help shape their castles.
• They have four hours to build their castles.
• They use knives and chisels to carve out their designs.
• The winners receive Golden Buckets and Silver Shovels.

Here are some of their castles, which are amazing!

A bag of lost marbles

A real sandcastle!

A dragon

A plate with pie and a fork

8th Rubble of the World: The Astrodome with a bat through it!

The Sandlot

Downtown Crabby: It's Sabastian!

Gunshow: Muscels with a Mom Tatoo

The Harlem Shake

Mount Duckmore

Thrift Shop: A fur coat, a keyboard, and sneakers

A cruise ship made out of toilets

The Wicked Sand"Witch"
The was the castle that our classmate built!

I know it has the shark from Finding Nemo,
but it also has the yellow brick road to Oz.

Carnival Shipoopi

     And there were so many more!

     As we headed back to the car, it took forever because we couldn't get the kids to stop playing in the sand.  I was letting them play leisurely, but Matt was getting very tired so he hurried us along.  We stopped at Starbucks to fuel up on caffeine and we were headed home from another great vacation.

I love how she had no shame to strut her stuff even though she was covered in sand.  That's my girl!

Family Vacation {Day Two}

     The second day of our Galveston vacation started with sleeping in late!  Matt works six days a week and has to be at work at 6:00 each morning, and on Sundays he's up early to go to church, so he rarely gets the chance to sleep in late.  So sleeping in late was definitely on his list of things to do while on vacation.

     We did get up early enough the catch the tail end of our continental breakfast and Brazos loved his homemade waffle from the waffle maker.

     Once everyone was fully awake and tummies full of waffles, we loaded the car and headed to the Galveston Train Museum.  We had past the building several times not knowing that it was the train museum.  From the front you couldn't see a train in sight.  We found a parking spot in the lot next to the museum and we had to pay $5.00 to park.  Matt started to put a dollar in the parking meter, but then I saw on the flier I had that people going to the train museum could park for free.  Matt stopped putting money in the wrong slot {yes, he put the dollar in someone else's parking meter!} and we walked into the museum.  We bought our tickets and asked about the parking.  The man said, "Oh yes, we have free parking in the back of the museum.  If you parked next door, I hope you put money in the meter.  I had a guy come in here once and ask about parking and before he could get back outside he already had a ticket on his windshield."  What do you know.....Matt went back outside to move the car and someone was already writing him a ticket.  Luckily they stopped and Matt was able to move the car without any trouble.

     The museum was amazing!  It's a beautiful building with a large waiting area with wooden benches and a gorgeous news stand.  A local artist created ghost passengers that sat in the benches and stood throughout the train station.  The passengers were solid white and were all wearing period clothing from the hay days of the train station.  They ghosts didn't phase Brazos one bit, but Sandy was a bit leery of the stiff people staring at her.

     The train station had small table with Thomas the train toys and of course, Brazos noticed it right away.  Matt and I noticed the big trains outside, but we could barely convince Brazos to stop playing to go see the big trains.  He was in a super bad mood when we made him walk outside to see the big trains.  We thought the sight of the huge engines would make him bounce back into a happy little man, but it took him a good 15 minutes to finally get out of his funk.  Once sweet Brazos came back to us, he was ecstatic to climb into all the engines and train cars.  The museum was the perfect place for our future train conductor!

This little girl reminded me of Peter Pan because she was trying to catch her shadow.  It fascinated her!

     Choo choo!  All aboard the Supak Express!  Next stop, the beach!  The rest of the day we spent playing in the sand and water at Crystal Beach on Boliver Peninsula.  It was so much fun!  Even though we've been to the beach twice in the past year, the was the most fun I have had at the beach.  Sandy followed Brazos everywhere he went...to the water, to the sand, to the water, to the sand.  And she loved sitting right at the edge of the water letting the waves wash over her little legs.

     This last picture is one that I turned in for an online photography class I'm taking.  The assignment was to take pictures that tell a story.  Pictures should show the setting, characters, and close up details.  We had to make a collage to turn in showing all three.  My instructor said, "The color on this is phenomenal.  Perfect!"  That made my day.  It's nice to be the student every now and then. ;)

And although the beach was covered in seaweed, we still had a blast!  Day two of vacation = success!