Vacation Season

We were very lucky that my mom wanted to spend a little more time with the grandkids before we head off to Texas so she invited us on another cruise. To refresh your memory, we went on a cruise last year around this time and it was awful. Taylor didn't sleep at night and we spent hours pushing her around the boat all night long and we were all exhausted and crabby. I'm sure we all vowed never to travel with her again but a year has passed and we decided to give it a try again. Since 5 days were so bad last year we decided to try 7 days this time! Yes, these pictures may all look very familiar since we went on the same boat and to some of the same islands but the kids had so much fun that it was totally worth it. They were both great sleepers and so much fun to be with. And thanks to the kids playroom, mom and I even got to enjoy some peace and quiet, although Ethan seem to think that we must be doing really fun things while he was gone so we always had to bargain when it came time to ship him off to play. Of course when I came to pick him up he always asked for a few more minutes so I think he was having a good time too.

Ethan came up with the idea several weeks before we left that he wanted to try all sorts of food while we were on vacation. He even made a list. He did great and I think we made it through most of the list. You can see the thumbs up for the crab cakes. He must have gotten his love of seafood from his dad. This look was actually directed at the fact that green beans were on the plate with his shrimp, scallops, and calamari. Scallops and calamari wasn't on the original list and they won't be on any future list from Ethan's lack of enthusiam. Just FYI even though Ethan is wearing the same shirt it wasn't the same meal. His brillant mother forgot to bring one stack of his clothes so there was a lot of repeats during the week.
The lobster was his favorite. So at the end of the week we crossed off shrimp, lobster, crab, steak, and fish. He cracked me up when he looked at the steak and said "Next time I want the red steak, like daddy, not this black kind." I guess he doesn't like my well done steak any more than Abe does.

Someone doesn't want their picture taken with their mother. Oh it starts early.I was trying to convince Taylor that she didn't need to smile big (ie stick out her lower jaw and bear her teeth). So I asked for a thinking face and I got it.

These adorable children truly struggle with smiling (I'm sure they get it from me). You can see Taylor watching my mom behind me and copying what she is doing. This lovely beach was right off the boat, as you can see behind the kids. It was just perfect.

The kids had a wonderful time at the pirate themed party. Taylor couldn't wait to have her face painted though Ethan was very much against it for some reason. You have to love a party where they paint your children at 9 at night and you get to fight with a tired child to try and remove it before bed. What are these people thinking? Good thing mom was prepared with vaseline or we might still be wiping it off.

Ethan asked me to take his picture and this was his best pose. He NEVER wants his picture taken but this one cracked me up.

Half Moon Cay is an amazing island in the Bahamas. I think mom and I were just as excited as the kids to go back. We were ready for a long day this year and the kids swam and played until they were both completely exhausted.

Ethan is a great swimmer with his lifejacket on. He is so independent and would never get out of the water if it was up to him. Taylor didn't have as good of luck with her lifejacket and was very high maintenance in the water.

Our favorite part of the island was the pirate ship play area. I really think Abe needs to build of one of these in our backyard in his spare time next year :) Taylor and Ethan both are huge fans of pirates so there was a lot of "arrrr matie" going on as they ran from one area to the next or were "trapped" by the bad pirates. Their enthusiam was contagious.

Taylor was always so excited to find a towel animal in our bed. Every night she would say "it's my ____ (insert the animal of the night) and I love him." Then Ethan would promptly destroy it and she would cry "but I loved him" and find the animal on grandma's bed. And we repeated that pattern for 7 nights.

Ethan's putt putt skills have improved from last year. Both kids would have played all day long if I had let them.

Our 30 minute stop in Nassau. If there wasn't a great beach the kids weren't even interested in getting off the boat.

We are very proud of our cheap, plastic trophy for our win as "Best Twisting Family" on the boat. Since this will be the one and only dance contest we ever win, we will treasure it. The kids were so excited. Ethan thought he was a shoe-in for the "Best Boy Dancer" since he was the only boy for the first 2 minutes of the song but then came some little boy with some serious moves. He won it fair and square but Ethan didn't see it that way and he was crushed. Thankfully there was one chance to redeem ourselves with the family twisting contest. We danced as hard as we could and they had pity on us!

The kids loved the water slide but it was a lot more crowded than last year so they couldn't play in the water at the bottom and it was also a battle. I was happy to see that my kids weren't the only ones that couldn't get the concept though.

Househunting in San Antonio

I can’t believe how far I have fallen behind on blogging. Last month Abe and I decided to take a trip to San Antonio to look for a place to live. I was going to go by myself since Abe doesn’t have any time off these days but the doctor he was looking for was nice enough to let him have some time off and my mom was nice enough to watch the kids so we could go. Although it was complicated to get the kids to Richmond and meet up in San Antonio, since I had already bought my ticket when Abe decided to come, it was worth it. We have such a time nice exploring the city, looking at houses and just having a kid free long weekend. When I booked the trip I had no idea that it was “Fiesta Week” in San Antonio. It’s some big cultural event in the city but it really just meant that all the nice hotels were booked, traffic and parking were horrible, and everyone was taking random days for holidays. We did find a cute bed and breakfast to stay at. It was on a very quiet end of the riverwalk until the day when they had a big Fiesta party right outside our window. It was the one day that I really wanted to take a nap and relax after looking at houses all morning. It wasn’t going to happen with the loud latin music blaring all afternoon.
I wanted to surprise Abe with a nice dinner for his birthday while we were out there but I never have good luck when I try to surprise him. He always either figures out the surprise or does something to ruin it. I should be prepared for it by now but I still try. I was going to try to surprise Abe by staying at a hotel (we were going to spend the whole trip at the house of a friend of a friend) but since Abe was arriving first and I didn’t get there until 5 hours later I couldn’t figure out a good way to work out my surprise. So the dinner was my last hope for a surprise. I thought I could get him to walk with me along the riverwalk until we came to the restaurant, an expensive steak restaurant. But of course we were running late so I had to rush him along for our reservation time and he totally caught onto my plan. I picked the restaurant based on the lovely view of the river and the romantic atomosphere. Here is what is looked like on their website.

Little did we know that because of Fiesta week they were going to put up an ugly wooden fence and have loud, bad music playing and lots of people drinking and partying right beside our table and we could barely talk over the noise. Here is the picture below from our table. It was almost funny how bad my surprises turn out. But we did enjoy our time hanging out on the riverwalk.

So while we were there we spent most of the days looking at rental properties. We thought we had a lot of options from the online searches we did before we left but we quickly learned that pictures can be very deceiving. Most of the houses had not been well taken care of, were dirty, or weren't even honest about the number of bedrooms they had. Our favorite house was the one where the formal living room consisted of piles of clothes and 3 guns laying on the floor. The living room was two camp chairs, a big screen tv, and can of dip. Abe said he counted around 15 guns just laying around the house in every room. Having noticed a car in the driveway when we came in I couldn't help but think that they could be in the house and these were not people that I wanted to surprise. I think I held my breath the whole time we were in the house. Finally on the last day Abe was there one house lowered their price and came into our price range so we went to take a look. We are excited because this house is just a few blocks from the church and walking distance to the elementary school. It is right off the interstate for Abe's job and right behind a huge shopping center with Target and Kohl's. So here are a few pictures of the house. We will have a guest room and lots of space so I hope we get lots of visits from friends and family.

The formal sitting room has a pool table that the owner has left in the house. Maybe we will have to take up pool.

We are so excited about the move, although we will really miss our great friends here. Ethan is counting down the number of Sundays left until we move. It is nice that he is so excited.

And since no post would be complete with out some pictures of the kids here are a few from Easter.