Canche Chronicles: Family Vacation!

THURSDAY morning we got up around seven with the intention of leaving for Galveston at eight. Well, it took a little bit longer to get packed and on the road than we thought so we didn’t head out until 8:45. The drive to Galveston is about four hours so I was a little nervous about the girls but they ended up doing great. I brought some toys for the car but we didn’t end up breaking them out until the last hour or so. At ten thirty both of them fell asleep. Haley slept about an hour and Emily slept about an hour and a half. I couldn’t believe that Haley napped, she hasn’t taken a morning nap since she was one!

We had planned to eat somewhere on the way but the girls were doing so well that we ended up driving all the way to Galveston and then ate at a little burger place about a mile from our hotel. Haley used the potty several times during our drive. The first time she went she peed so much, I was afraid she was going to fill the bucket up if she went again like that but she didn’t. The next time she went she booed and then we were super happy that she had peed so much because the boo (I know this is way TMI) was completely submerged in the pee and it didn’t smell at all. I realized this when I dumped the bucket at the restaurant and it smelled so bad. Had she not peed so much at first it would have been terrible. Anyways, sorry about that…

After lunch we went to our hotel, it was called the Holiday Inn Club Vacations and Resort. I know it doesn’t sound like much but it was valued as the #2 hotel on the Island according to Tripadvisor and I am SO GLAD that we stayed there. It was the only place that I could find that was right on the beach. All of the other places are super close to the beach but you have to cross a four lane road to get there and the beach part is pretty small. Plus there are stairs that go from the beach to the road and Haley is obsessed with stairs and I just knew she would be climbing up and down them all the time and would eventually get run over or give me a heart attack. Our hotel was further west from all the other hotels and you walked on a little boardwalk thing from the pool to the beach (it was maybe 30 yards). We paid a little more to stay at this place but I kept telling Dave that I thought it was worth every penny, I think he agreed.

Check in time at our hotel was not until four and when we got there it was more like 2. David asked if our room was ready yet and they said it wasn’t but they would call us when it was. We changed into our swimsuits and headed to the beach while we waited. At 3:15 they called to say it was ready so David went and took all our stuff from the van to the room and then came back. Haley and Emily both just loved the beach. The water was SO warm, I didn’t have to get used to it or anything. It is pretty gross water, brownish/green with very little visibility, kind of like New Jersey. I had already heard people talk about how awful the ocean is at Galveston though so I was prepared. I think part of the reason is because the sand is pretty dark so it makes the water dark. Anyways, the beach is on the Gulf of Mexico, not the Atlantic or anything so I bet that makes a difference. We could see oil drilling rigs way out in the distance.

Emily liked to put her hands in the sand and try to crawl around but her favorite thing to do, by far, was eat the sand. I tried to stop her the first couple times and then I thought that maybe if she ate a mouthful she would realize how gross it was and stop. Even after getting a mouthful, Emy kept going back for more. She liked eating it and then spitting it out. So, needless to say, I spent a lot of time intercepting Emy’s hands to her mouth and cleaning her mouth out. She didn’t do it nearly as much by the last day so maybe she did eventually learn her lesson.

Around four thirty we went in and took showers and headed out for dinner. I fed Haley and Emy some applesauce before we left because I thought they were starting to get hungry. Well apparently they weren’t actually hungry, they were tired. We got about a half mile down the road and both girls were completely zonked out. David and I decided to take the opportunity to explore the Island a little bit. He drove down the main strip and we picked out a restaurant to eat at and looked at some of the other attractions. Then he stopped by Walgreens and I went in and bought some pacis because we had already lost Emy’s. When I got back to the van Emy was starting to wake up and we figured that Haley shouldn’t sleep much longer anyways so we went to the restaurant.

It was a seafood place so I ordered shrimp and David had a patti melt sandwich. I got macaroni and cheese as a side and Haley ate some of that. Haley got to try her first hush puppies, she wasn’t too impressed. Emy liked them though. After we ate we drove up the road a ways to an amusement park looking place we had seen when the girls were sleeping. We parked and then walked over to get a look and saw that it would cost us $36 just to get into the place, that was without paying for any rides or anything! We were hoping to let Haley ride a merry go round but once we saw how expensive it was to even get into the rides we changed our plans. There was a an ice cream place across the street and down a ways so we went there instead. Haley got a vanilla ice cream cone with M&Ms on top, her choice. She ended up sharing some of her ice cream with Emy. David and I ended up waiting and we got shakes from Sonic on the way back to the hotel instead, we really can’t resist their strawberry-banana shakes. We also stopped by Academy on our way home and bought some chairs for the beach and a boogie board.

When we got back we put the girls in their jammies and they went right to bed. Our room was actually more like two rooms. One of the rooms had a queen bed and a closet and TV and everything and next to that was a bathroom. The other room had a kitchenette and a sitting area with a couch that pulled out into a bed. We put Haley in the couch bed and brought the pack ‘n play for Emy.

FRIDAY the girls must have known that we were on vacation because they slept in until after nine! Our hotel did not have breakfast so we loaded up in the van and went to a little donut place down the street. It was super cute because it had low counters and bar stools that we could sit on while we ate, it reminded me of Two Toots in Wheaton. After breakfast we went back to the hotel and changed into our suits and went to the pool. The pool was not huge but they had a perfect little area for babies to play. Haley spent a lot of time filling up her buckets and mixing the water with her shovels. She kept saying she was making stuff. Some of her more popular dishes were biscuits, spaghetti, and cookies. Around lunch time we went back to the room and pulled out our leftovers from Thursday. I had brought some food from home so we also ate some of that.

We decided to brave the beach without naps so we headed there after lunch. We played in the water and sand for a while and then I nursed Emily to sleep. Haley laid down on her towel for a little bit but she never fell asleep. David went out on the boogie board and ended up getting stung on his foot by a jelly fish. We had heard that pee is the only thing that helps so he asked Haley to pee on his foot and she did right away, haha. She has great control of her little bladder! David ended up going back to the room to find another remedy. He saw online that soaking it in hot water and scraping it with a credit card also work so he did that and then came back to the beach.

Emily slept about an hour and then woke up and we played a little more in the sand before heading back to the room around four. We rinsed the girls in the shower and then put them down for naps while Dave and I showered and got ready for dinner. Haley fell asleep in seconds but Emy was still fresh from her beach nap. We let Haley sleep about an hour and a half and then we headed out. We found a nice restaurant a little inland called Clary’s. It was definitely the nicest restaurant we have ever taken Haley to but it really worked out. We kept Emy in her infant seat because she never had fallen asleep and we knew she was tired. They seated us in a corner of the restaurant near an empty part room or something so when Emy got tired I went in there and swayed with her carseat for a couple minutes and she went right to sleep. David had Red Snapper and I had scallops and Haley ate rice and bread. She is more of a carbs girl.

Haley did so well at the restaurant, she didn’t even ask for the Ipad. David and I were getting kind of nervous because there were not any other children there but after a while they seated a family next to us with two young kids. One of them looked to be Haley’s age and one looked a little older and they were both sleeping on their parent’s shoulders! They slept most of the time that we were there, it was crazy! I was so glad that we ate at this place because it was really nice and everything was so good. Also, even though it was a nice place, the food was pretty fast and I’m sure that helped Haley be good. I got chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert which Haley helped me eat and David got key lime pie.

After the restaurant we went home and ordered the movie Horton Hears a Who from the front desk. They had a whole library of movies and that was the one that Haley chose, she wanted that one over Chicken Run! We watched the first forty-five minutes or so but then the girls were getting tired so we put them to bed. It took a little while for Haley to wind down but I laid next to her and she eventually dozed off.

Haleyism:

Anytime Haley wanted to use the potty when we were in the car she would say, "Mommy, I really need to use the potty!"

Emilyism:

We ended up finding Emily's paci that we lost on Thursday, on Friday. It was on the boardwalk thing on the way to the beach, haha.