Memorial Day Weekend Trip

Over Memorial Day weekend we drove down to Corpus Christi and South Padre Island in the south of Texas for a fun little vacation.

We spent two days in Corpus Christi, where we went to the beach, toured the USS Lexington (a retired aircraft carrier), and went swimming a lot at our hotel. I think we picked the wrong beach to go to, because it was not that great, especially for little kids - the waves were pretty big and strong, and there wasn't really a shallow, mellow area for the girls to hang out. Also, there was not a lot of room for playing in the sand - the water came right up to a sandy area that cars used for driving up and down the beach. So I was constantly trying to keep the kids out of the way of the cars - kind of a dumb setup for a beach. Anyway, the boys had a lot of fun, but I felt bad for Rachel because she had been so excited to go to the beach and then within the first 5 minutes she had gotten knocked down several times by the waves and her face/hair/swimming suit were completely full of mud and sand, and she was pretty much done after that. She much preferred the hotel pool after that first beach experience.

(click on the first picture to start at the beginning of the slideshow)

The USS Lexington was pretty neat, though. We've never done anything like that. There were lots of little self-guided tours all over to take you through different areas of the ship, and there was also a neat IMAX movie about fighter pilots that the kids loved. We were glad we went.

Monday morning we headed down to South Padre Island (about a 3-hour drive) for the next part of our trip. The plan was to spend Monday afternoon at the beach and then go to Schlitterbahn Waterpark in South Padre on Tuesday and head home Wednesday morning. Things didn't exactly work out as planned. First of all, Rachel cried almost the whole way there, complaining that her ear hurt. That probably should have clued me in that she was sick. I felt bad for her, but kind of brushed it off, and mostly just thought it was annoying. Whoops.

After we got to our hotel, we ate lunch and then headed down to the beach - there was a little path right behind the hotel that led straight to the beach, which was nice. It was definitely a much better beach than the one we went to in Corpus Christi. All of us had an unbelievably fun time except Rachel. She pretty much sat on a blanket and cried the whole time. I thought it was just because she hated the beach after her first experience. I didn't realize that it was because she was deathly ill. Looking back, I am so mad at myself that I was so clueless - it should have been obvious that she was sick. Daniel and I kept making her come in the waves with us - we thought she was just being whiny and grumpy because she was afraid, so we kept trying to "help" her get over her fear. She wanted nothing to do with it. All she wanted to do was lay down on a blanket and try to sleep. At least I tucked her in periodically and tried to shield her from the sun. What a nice mom, right? After that we pretty much ignored her because she was acting so grumpy. Anyway, we stayed there for a really long time because it was an awesome beach and everyone else was having so much fun. So she was pretty miserable for awhile. She just layed on a blanket and tried to sleep and every once in a while sat up and cried because nobody was helping her (poor girl! I probably shouldn't even be admitting to the neglect that was going on). Finally, we went back to the hotel, showered, left and got dinner (Rachel didn't eat anything), and then went back to the hotel to go to bed. That's when I noticed that Rachel had a raging fever. I don't know if I've ever felt her so hot. She was crying and crying about her ear hurting, and pretty much didn't sleep all night. She was burning up and her ear and her head hurt. She could only sleep if I was holding her - if I held her and sang to her she would calm down enough to go to sleep. As you can imagine, I felt really horrible and mean for not taking better care of her at the beach earlier in the day. In some ways it was good that I felt so guilty, though, because I was happy to hold her and sing to her in the middle of the night - it felt good to comfort and help her like I should have been doing all day. I'm not sure if it made up for it, though. It still makes me sad to think about it.

Anyway, Tuesday morning she still had a really bad fever, and we decided to skip Schlitterbahn and come home a day early. I considered staying at the hotel with the girls and sending Daniel and the boys to Schlitterbahn, but Daniel and Tristan had both gotten pretty sunburned at the beach on Monday, so we decided we would all have a much better time if we just wait a few weeks and go to the Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels (about an hour from our house). Daniel took the boys down to the beach one more time to look for treasures (they found a bunch more shells, an old coin, a giant sea slug, and several jellyfish, much to their delight) and then we packed up and started the drive home. I'm so glad we did - Rachel had a pretty high fever and some pretty major diarrhea the whole drive home, which wasn't fun in the car, but would have been a lot worse at a water park.

So besides the whole disaster with Rachel being sick, it was a really fun trip. And Rachel is feeling a lot better today. I'm hoping she doesn't even remember her awful day at the beach. I don't think I'll bring it up.

Choosing the Right

Rachel has really been into the whole "choose the right" idea lately, which is kind of fun. I guess she picked it up in Sunbeams. For example, I'll say something like, "Now make sure you tell Jaeden's mom thank-you when it's time to come home from the party", and she'll say, "Uh, Mom? Of course I will do that. I always choose the right." Or, I'll say, "now when we go into the library do you think you should run around and talk in a loud voice?" Rachel's response: "Mom! Stop it! You don't even have to say that - don't you know I always choose the right?" Oh, yeah. I forgot. That must have been some other 3-year old acting crazy at the library last time.

She'll often throw her 2-cents into different conversations I might be having with the kids about good/bad behavior, trying to come up with the "winning" answer - a few nights ago at dinner Daniel and I were talking with the boys about something that had just happened at our house with one of their friends. (To summarize, there was a shortage of popsicles, someone had given up their own popsicle to this friend because he was having a big tantrum about it, and then when his brother asked if he could have a bite, the friend shouted rudely and pushed his brother away.) We told the boys we hoped they would never act like that, and then asked them what they thought the best thing to do would have been. They both agreed that the right thing to do would be to share a bite with the brother when he asked, and probably even split the whole popsicle with him. Rachel then piped up, "Well, do you know what I would do? I would take a whole box of popsicles home and give one to everyone in my whole family!" She then sat there beaming, like "wow, I cannot even believe how righteous and kind I am. No way can anybody beat that answer!"

She has also started to get a little frustrated at Elizabeth's lack of self-control in the "choose the right" department. The other day Lizza was doing something wild or goofy (so, basically standard Elizabeth behavior), and it wasn't even really a problem, but Rachel was very concerned. "Mom! I am just so sick of this! When is she ever going to learn how to choose the right? I'm just sick of this!" She then did a little sigh and shook her head at me as if she and I are equal partners in the on-going task to discipline Lizza, like, "What can we do, Mom? I'm at my wit's end here!"

The thing is, Rachel really is amazingly good for a 3-year old, and she does not cause me much trouble at all - it's just been funny to see her become so aware of that whole concept. I guess I should consider myself lucky that she thinks it's such a fun thing at this point in her life, and hope that she doesn't outgrow this phase too soon.

Utah Trip: Part Three

Okay, I promise this is the last post about our Utah trip. We just had too much fun to make it fit into only two posts (meaning I took too many pictures). I think after this post I'll finally have it out of my system and maybe I'll be able to do regular posts again. We'll see.

On Sunday after we dropped Daniel off at the airport we drove out to his sister Gretchen's house in Layton. The rest of Daniel's family came up too, so we had a big family dinner, followed by a fun walk to the park. We spent the night there, and then the next day we went to a different park, played around, ate pizza for lunch, fed the ducks, and then went swimming at the Layton Surf 'n Swim.

My kids had so much fun with their cousins Adalynn and Beck (Gretchen's kids). It made me sad we don't get to seem them all the time like we used to. Rachel was especially in awe of Addy. After we got home, I asked her if she had a good time playing with her. She replied, "No, Mom - I didn't have a good time with Adalynn - I wish I was Adalynn."

Monday evening we drove down to Orem to stay with my parents for a week (they were back in town after being in England for the first part of our trip). My kids spent most of their time playing out in the yard, and had so much fun. They also loved hanging out with my little brothers David and Vic. Tristan pointed out to me that David (who is 12) is closer to Tristan's age than he is to mine, and he told me he wished David was his brother instead of his uncle. I think he really was hoping we could arrange a way for David to come live with us. The boys also spent a lot of time reading - they could not believe all of the books at Grandma's house. Other fun things we did: hanging out with my sister Bekah and her daughter Mariah, game night with my sisters and their husbands, lunch at the mall with Grandma Nini and Gretchen, and the Bean Museum in Provo. We went with Gretchen and her kids, my cousin and her two boys, and one of my friends from high school and her three boys. Every city needs a Bean Museum - I love that place. After we were done with the museum we walked down to the BYU Creamery and had lunch and ice-cream.

It was so fun to see my family and spend time with them. The week went by much too fast. I was a little nervous for the flights home with just me and the kids, but everything went perfectly. We left early Sunday morning (my dad drove us up to the airport). We got through security fine (the only hassle was putting on everyone's shoes after) and then had to wait awhile before our flight. Luckily everyone was in a good mood and excited about flying again. The boys just sat and read the whole time we waited, and apparently looked well-behaved - when we all got on the airplane, I sat in one row with the girls and had the boys sit in the row in front of me, and a lady came and asked if she could sit next to the boys. I said sure, but warned her that I wasn't sure how it would go, and she said, "Oh, I was watching them in the airport, and knew I wanted to sit by them because of how good they were." I'm not sure if it was true or not, but it sure made me feel good. I wish I knew who she was - she was so nice to them. They all just chatted away the whole flight. I could hear bits and pieces of their conversation, and I could tell things were going to be just fine when about 10 minutes into the flight she was already asking Tristan math problems.

We landed in Denver and had a two-hour layover, which could have been problematic, but ended up going just great. We walked around and explored the airport for awhile, riding every escalator in sight to waste time. Then we got some lunch and sat down in the food court to eat. Tristan got a Happy Meal at McDonalds, and they were kind enough to give us 4 toys with his meal so that all the kids got one, which was nice because they spent the rest of the layover playing around with their little toys.

The flight to Austin was a little longer, but Lizzy put her head down on my lap and fell asleep right as we took off, so that helped things a lot. Another nice lady sat by the boys and helped them out whenever they needed it, and before we knew it we were landing in Austin. Everyone was so excited to see Daniel again, and as much fun as we had in Utah, it did feel good to be home again.

Utah Trip: Part Two

Daniel could only stay in Utah for a few days after the wedding (the kids and I stayed for an extra week), so we wanted to do some fun things as a family before he left. On Friday, the day after the wedding, we met Grandpa Darcy (Daniel's dad) for lunch at Thanksgiving Point. Daniel's brother Nicolas was there, too, along with his sister Audra with her baby girl, London.

The kids loved just being outside there. At one point they were waiting for me to come out of the restaurant, and I found them all just sprawled out on a big grassy hill. Rachel came running up to me and yelled, "Mom, you will not believe this, it is so awesome! You can actually lay down on the grass in Utah!!!" (You may need to have seen our yard in Texas to understand why this was such an exciting thing for her.)

Grandpa Darcy had to leave after lunch, but the rest of us went over to enjoy Farm Country. We were planning on spending just a little bit of time there and then going over to the dinosaur museum, but the kids loved it so much we ended up spending the whole afternoon there.

After we were all done petting animals, feeding animals, going on pony rides, etc., we let the kids play for awhile at a little playground across the street, and then we all headed up Provo Canyon. We have missed the mountains so much! We stopped at Vivian Park and let the kids play around. There was still a little bit of snow on the ground in some areas, which was kind of a novelty. I don't think my kids remember snow very much at all.

Thanksgiving Point/Farm Country/Playground/Vivian Park pictures:

On Saturday we decided to go back out to Thanksgiving Point, this time to do the dinosaur museum. The last time we went there was when the boys were little and I was pregnant with Rachel, so they were all pretty excited about it.

After the museum, we drove back down to Provo and met Daniel's family at Los Hermanos for dinner, which brought back some fun memories (we used to live just down the street from there).

Utah Trip: Part One

So, I'm not sure how a 12-day trip to Utah has managed to take up a month of my time, but somehow that's what it did. It was nice to take a little break from blogging, but now it's feeling hard to get back into it. Maybe I will take the easy way and start up again by just posting hundreds and hundreds of pictures from our trip. Just kidding. Kind of. I'll limit myself to only 3 slideshows on this post, and I promise they're not that long.

For starters, we went to Utah about 3 weeks ago for Daniel's brother's wedding. I was so excited to be able to take all the kids - they haven't been back to Utah since we moved 2 years ago.

We flew in the night before the wedding. The flights there actually went really smoothly, and it was so much fun to fly all together as a family. The kids were all really excited about going on the airplane, except Rachel who was pretty nervous at first. She requested to sit by Daniel, and that helped her feel better. It ended up not as scary as she had imagined, and in fact she decided to laugh almost hysterically during the whole takeoff just to show us how much fun she was having, and how not scared she was. And of course, once we were up in the air, the airplane drinks and snacks were a big hit. With a little help from some Boxcar children books, activity books, and hundreds of stickers, things went really well. We then had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Phoenix, which I was not looking forward to, but it ended up being just fine because Lizzy fell asleep right as we landed and then slept almost all the way through our layover. So we had a very peaceful dinner at Wendy's in the airport, with Lizzy asleep in her stroller the whole time.

My sister picked us up at the airport in my mom's van (my parents were out of town and let us use their van during our stay) and then we drove to Daniel's mom's house to sleep. The next day was the wedding, luncheon, and reception. It was so much fun to see everyone again, and the kids loved it. Anthony married a really nice girl named Amber, and Tristan kept saying things like, "This is so weird - I can't believe I have a new aunt and I just met her five minutes ago!"

Weddding and luncheon pictures:

Later that night was the reception. The kids had fun eating good food and dancing around, but got bored quickly, so Daniel's brother-in-law rented a big activity/raquetball room at the reception place and we took all the kids in there and let them color and play around. I think that was the highlight of the evening for them. Tristan didn't stop hitting balls the whole time. He was pretty exhausted by the time we finally went back out to the reception.

Reception pictures: