A Few Vacation Days!

Last week, we took a few days for a little vacation to have some fun and see some of our family.

We visited Lane's sister, Torri, and her husband, Roger, for a day in College Station. We got to get our food fixes from several of our favorite restaurants from college, and we also got to show Dane around the Texas A&M campus for the first time. That was lots of fun. I got to introduce him to my old boss in the Accounting Dept. at the campus bookstore, too. It was good to get to visit with her for a few minutes. While we were there, we were able to take Dane onto Kyle Field, the home of Aggie Football! Whoop! They were letting people on the field, which doesn't always happen. I guess because it wasn't striped yet. Anyway, we let him get a little bit of a feel of what it will be like when he's both a starting linebacker and running back on the Aggie football team for the seasons 2024 - 2027! Roger works for A&M, so we also got to see his great new office.

Torri took Dane and me out to visit with her two horses, Tess & Scout. Dane wasn't quite ready to ride yet, but he did pet Scout a little bit. It was great to get to spend some time with them as we passed through on our way to Galveston (I mean Torri & Roger-not the horses).

Next stop, Houston, Texas. We spent a couple of days at Lane's parents' house before heading on to our final destination of Galveston. While in Houston, we got to go and visit Lane's Grandpa and his wife, Marcia. They recently moved into a new house, which is so nice. It was great to spend the afternoon with them and to share a wonderful brisket meal with them. Yum! Dane also got to play at the Splash Pad park in Wren's & Skeetz's neighborhood. It's a really neat place to have closeby their house. After church Sunday morning, we loaded up the car and headed with Lane's parents to Galveston.

We had the best time! We basically went to two main places - Moody Gardens and Schlitterbahn waterpark. If you've never been to Moody Gardens, it is definitely worth the trip, and it is a great place for kids of all ages and adults! We went to several 3-D IMAX movies, which Dane tended to sleep through. They also had a dinosaur exhibit, with sounds and motion. Dane wasn't quite sure what to think about them, and frankly, neither was I. Three pyramids make up Moody Gardens - the Rainforest, the Aquarium, and the Discovery museum. We went to the Rainforest and Discovery museum on Monday morning. Dane loved all of the animals, and he especially loved sharing all of his new experiences with Mr. Monkey, his trusty compadre! We have several photos of Dane posing Mr. Monkey for pictures. It's really cute and funny! I also thought that it was funny that he kept calling the flamingos, "mosquitos".

Monday afternoon, we saved the huge Aquarium pyramid for the entire afternoon. It was really great, and we all loved seeing the fish and penguins and seals. Dane especially loved the seals, and he kept backtracking through the aquarium to go back to see the seals. Unfortunately, the trip to the Aquarium ended in tradegy, well at least for me. In the last room at the top of the pyramid, they had a viewing room that had stairs down the sides and big, deep steps in the middle that you can sit on. Well, I was carrying Dane down the big, middle steps, and I didn't judge one step right and I went down wrong on my right ankle and really sprained it pretty badly. It popped probably 6 to 8 times and I fell down with Dane. He rolled on down the steps, and thankfully, was not hurt or scared at all. I, however, was not so lucky. My ankle immediately started swelling, and I had to be escorted out of the place in a wheelchair. Even that part was kinda fun, though. As Lane pushed me down the ramp in front of the place to the car, he ran me down the ramp as I held Dane, and Dane thought that was really fun!

So, needless to say, I spent Monday evening depressed in the hotel room, while everyone else went swimming, wondering whether I would be stuck there the rest of the time.

I iced and rested it pretty well that night, so that I could hopefully still get to go to Schlitterbahn on Tuesday. If you don't know it, I love roller coasters and waterslides and anything that will give you those great momentary thrills, so I had no intention of missing Schlitterbahn, and I didn't! Somehow, I managed to hobble along all day long and had a blast! Dane loved going down the little slides over and over and over and spraying me and Lane in the face with the squirting water. He absolutely loved being in the tubes on the Lazy River, and he pretended that he was "driving the boat"! Lane, Skeetz and I got to go down some pretty daunting slides that were really awesome, too!

As usual, the food was also a major highlight of the trip. I would definitely say that the key word for almost every meal for Dane was shrimp! That boy can down some shrimp, let me tell you. At one place, called Shrimp & Stuff, we think that he ate about 12 boiled shrimp. And that's the funny thing - he doesn't want it fried, he wants it boiled. That place was off the beaten path, and it ended up being a great, affordable choice with really good food. One of our big, budgeted items for the trip was a meal at, hands down, one of the best restaurants in Texas, if not anywhere - Gaido's. It's a little pricy, but for a special occasion, definitely worth it. Their bisque, either lobster or shrimp, is SOOOO wonderful. Their bread's great, their desserts are great, well, basically everything is great. It's right on the seawall, so the view is even great, too! And, Dane had about 10 more shrimp there. The other great meal we had there was at The Rainforest Cafe. I had never been to one of those restaurants before, and I really liked it. Dane loved it because we were surrounded by fake elephants and monkeys and birds and real fish. It was fun and they also had a fun river ride connected to the restaurant. He had hotdogs there, though.

Anyway, all in all, we had a wonderful time, in spite of my minor, although quite painful, setback. Hope you enjoy the slideshow!