Grace's Groupies and Matthew's Mateys: Galveston Vacation highlights

We took our first real family vacation with all four of us. It was only a 45 minute drive (which turned into more like 1.5 hours) to Galveston, but everyone enjoyed the time at the beach. Out visit included trips to Moody Garden's Aquarium, time at the fantastic pool at our condo, a visit to Moody Garden's Rainforest with cousin Kieran & dad Sean (on a rainy morning), a cloudy afternoon at the beach...perfect for building sand castles, the Galveston Railroad Museum and lots of yummy seafood. Here are a few other highlights from the trip:

As mentioned above, the car trip down to the Island was much longer than anticipated, and stressful for me (Mommy). Since it was a Friday, Jeff was getting lots of calls from work including a big mistake that he had to handle. In the meantime, both kids (at separate times) managed to get their arms out of their car seats. This required pulling over each time, scolding them and putting the car seats back into proper position. In addition, the condo we rented was not available until well after naptime, so the kids didn't get their required naps and were bouncing off the walls by 4pm. As I recall, they were so wired that they didn't go to bed until past their usual 7/7:30 either.

As anyone with small kids knows, sleeping in a strange place is challenging, especially if you have to share a room when you normally don't. After Jeff successfully got Matthew down for his nap one afternoon, I took extra time reading to Grace so she would have no problem drifting off to sleep in their shared room. Unfortunately, Grace wasn't ready to sleep, so she climbed into Matthew's pack-n-play and woke him up to play. After that, Matthew and his pack-n-play moved into the bathroom!

After a morning playing in the awesome condo pool, Jeff and I each got big inner tubes and had the kids sit in our laps to ride the lazy river (also a part of our condo complex). Matthew was so tired from swimming that he fell asleep on me during the ride. It's a rarity that anyone falls asleep on me anymore, so I loved it!

Grace had a hard time grasping the concept of renting a condo and kept asking, "Mommy, why are the people who live here letting us stay at their house? Why aren't they here?" Actually, she seems to be pretty perceptive for just being 3!

I think the highlight at the Aquarium was the shark stamps scatter throughout the exhibit that were meant for the "Shark Passport". However, thanks to music class, my kids prefer stamping themselves to their passports.

After being away from home for 4 days, I am sooooo thankful for 2 separate bedrooms for the kids and all of their toys. They got WAY more TV time than I ever allow at home since it rained two mornings and we had nothing left with which to entertain them.

Our biggest complaint about the trip was MOSQUITOS! The moment we stepped out of our car in the condo garage, we each had at least 3 mosquitos on us each. that served as motivation for cooperating to get buckled in quickly.

Grace in particular had a bad mosquito experience when she decided she didn't want to put her shoes on before going to the Rainforest exhibit and daddy decided to let her have a "time-out" in the car. Little did he know that a mosquito was feasting on Grace during her entire time out. Poor thing had 3 mosquito bits within a square inch on her neck! I doubt she'll argue about putting her shoes on anytime soon!

Since Matthew's summer at Mother's Day Out, he has become quite outgoing and on our vacation he said "Hi!" to everyone. It's kind of like taking a puppy out for a walk, but one that talks! Everyone thought he was adorable.