The Great American Vacation

Have you ever REALLY needed a vacation? Well, we did. We have not been out of town to get away for a long time, with Joel and all. We started planning this trip in May, when Jav went down to the condo to do his yearly cleaning and maintenance. He had wanted to take Gabriel with him, knowing that it would probably be the last trip to the beach in a long time. And possibly the last long trip with Jav's parents since his father's health is starting to decline. I suggested waiting until we could all go, and renting a minivan so that we could all comfortably travel down there. You see, I love my in-laws, not just for the help they provide with the kids, but just because. They are truly wonderful, warm and funny people and I have grown to love them in the last 8 years.

So we finally nailed down a date and started major planning. We thought the day would never get here, especially when both kids and then me came down with bad colds the week before leaving. We still had to postpone our trip by a day due to Joel. It's such a hard and long car trip even when the kids feel good, that I just didn't see it working at all when he didn't feel well. It was great that we could wait an extra day because I think it really made a difference on how he and I felt when we finally left Sunday morning. Here are some of the highlights:

We knew we were in for a long drive when Gabriel yelled out at the intersection of B.Stair and 820, "We're almost at the beach!" But really the kids did amazingly well. I overpacked, of course, so there was very little room for people in our van. But we made it to Fredericksburg just in time to meet with my Great Uncle and two Great Aunts. That was the whole reason for stopping there on the way, because they had never seen Joel and we haven't visited in about a year and a half. All of them are in their upper 80's so I really wanted to see them. Being tired from the drive, we didn't think to take the camera inside and don't have any pictures of Uncle Robert holding Joel on his knee, or Gabriel showing Aunt Lou and Aunt Gena his favorite car book. OR of Joel pulling up to a standing position for the first time ever on their ottoman. I'm still mad at myself about that. We ate dinner at Auslander, one of the more touristy German restaurants, but they have really good German beer, and it was fun. I wanted to leave really early the next morning, but was out-voted. So I resigned myself to just take our time and get to Padre whenever. We had some stress trying to get both kids to bed at the same time in the same room, but after about 30 minutes of laying down with them they were quiet.

For breakfast the next morning, we ate one of our best meals at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that used to be a bar on the outskirts of town. Man, was that good food!!!! Traditional too. My father-in-law got menudo, and I think I would have even tried it. The tortillas were homemade. Just so, so yummy! Now that I think about it, I think it was the best meal on the trip. The next two pics are from there. I love the one of Joel dancing with his Tita, and I wish the one of Gabriel with the pinatas would have turned out better.

That second day was a LONG boring drive, as we all knew it would be. I passed some time with Gabriel showing him how to play air guitar, piano, drums, horns and just about anything we could think of while we were listening to his music. By the time we were driving through Harlingen (with still an hour before you get to the island), Joel had HAD it and couldn't figure out why Mommy was two feet away but couldn't hold him. It was so good to finally get there around 5:30. I tried to get the kids settled in while they all unpacked the van and brought in our tons of stuff. Jav took Gabriel down to say hello to the beach, with the promise that we would be seeing much more of it during the whole week. But then we realized at 7 that we still had to get groceries for the week. We decided to take both kids with us after we fed them dinner. Joel passed out sometime during our shopping trip, but Gabriel was wired. It was fun, though. How come even mundane grocery shopping is funner when you're on vacation? We got home and didn't get the kids into bed until 11 something, then all the adults ate dinner. What a long, hard day. But we were at the beach, so who cared?

Our first time to the beach with Joel didn't go well at all. He still had a bad cold, so runny messy nose that drives Mama crazy. Then, we didn't put sunscreen on them until we got down to the water. BIG mistake. It was an itchy mixture of sand and sunscreen, and it was really hot and we didn't have any shade. Jav was contemplating renting one of the big umbrellas and beach chairs when I decided that Joel just needed to go back to the nice air conditioned room and have a bath. He was much happier and immediately took a nap. The pic below shows a happier, cleaned up Joel back at the condo watching TV. Ahhhh. Jav and Gabriel stayed a little longer, but it was just really hot the first couple of days. We met a really nice couple, Jesse and Frida, from Texarkana while we were down that first morning, and saw them occasionally on the trip. After lunch I decided to try and get both boys down for a nap, something we did every day after that. The bedroom has huge thick drapes that don't let in any sunlight, so I started calling it The Cave. I always hold Joel during nap time, and it was so sweet to have Gabriel sleeping right next to us. Once when I woke up for a few minutes Gabriel had his hand on Joel's foot.

In the afternoons we decided to hit the pool since it was entirely shaded by about 4:30. I debated about putting Joel in the water, but decided it was ok as long as his head didn't go under. He loved floating around with Mommy. Jav and I took turns working with Gabriel on all he had learned in swim class this summer. Then we would all get cleaned up and bring in takeout for dinner. We only went to one nicer (kind of a stretch) restaurant, Blackbeard's while we were there. One funny thing Gabriel did during dinner one night was start talking like a robot. Completely out of the blue. We were having trouble understanding him and everyone was getting kind of frustrated because he wouldn't repeat anything in regular talk, just robot talk. All of a sudden, he said, "I'm freaking everybody out" in robot talk, and we all died laughing and couldn't stop. I don't know where he heard that, but just the fact that he understands things and knows the exact moment to say them amazes me. He has impeccable comic timing.

The next morning at the beach went a little better, but Joel still didn't like it too much. We stayed long enough to see something really cool, though. A pod of dolphins were making there way along and we could see them jumping up out of the water as they went. I started noticing Joel messing and pulling on his ears on this day, but he still wasn't really fussy so I held off on getting the antibiotic filled. That afternoon in the pool Joel discovered that if he kicked his legs like he loves to do on the ground, the water would splash really high! We got some funny video of that. Jav and his Dad drove to the airport in Harlingen to pick up Tia Sandie, who was going to spend the rest of the trip with us and ride with us back home. That night Gabriel had alot of trouble going to sleep and started saying he wanted to go home. I think he was just over tired and wanted his bed.

Each day we woke up a little later. I can't believe how much sleep I got on this trip. I decided to try feeding Joel before we went down to the beach and he fell asleep. Tita agreed to watch him while I went down with Jav, Gabriel and Sandra. What a fun morning we had. The weather had turned (the heat spell in FW broke the day before with a high of 77!!!), and it was cloudy and the waves seemed much bigger. We had a blast jumping in them. Then build a sand castle. I didn't want Tita to deal with a fussy Joel so I went back after a couple of hours. He seemed to be messing with his ears even more, so Friday we filled the prescription the the doctor had given us before we left. It turns out now that we're back home and he's still messing with them that his hair has grown long enough to keep hitting the back of his ear.

That night after dinner Jav, Gabriel and Sandra walked down to the beach with a glowstick to look for crabs. They got to see quite a few creatures, including one that we all now call Sandworms (from BeetleJuice) that Tia Sandie ran from without any regard for anyone else but herself. She was telling them to run from the "big, rattley funny-looking things". How comforting! I really wanted to go, but decided to stay and get Joel to sleep. A dad and his daughter (Gabriel's age or so) had been catching hermit crabs and she showed hers to Gabriel. Once again, Gabriel had a blast.

Our last day at the beach sadly came. And with it brought a pretty fussy Joel. So I didn't go down to the beach that last morning. Sigh. But I got another nap with Joel in the Cave. Aaahhhhh. And did some packing. Jav decided to shell out the dough to rent an umbrella for the day in case his parents wanted to go down later in the day. Tia Sandie stayed down there all day. She and Gabriel were getting really good at sand castles by now. We all had a late lunch and after a brief quiet time for Gabriel went down to the pool. Jav and Gabriel swam and swam while Tito, Joel and I watched. There was a girl walking around in a bikini who came up to show us her three-month-old. What do women do to themselves to lose that much weight that fast after giving birth? Whatever it is, I didn't do it!!! We all went down to the beach to say goodbye to the ocean and take some pictures. We wanted a good one of Joel sitting in the sand just like the great one we got of Gabriel when he was 13 months old (and we ended up using it for Christmas cards that year). But Joel wouldn't look up, the sun was too bright, and started to eat sand. Which made him upset because it didn't taste good. So no great picture. Plus our camera started washing out all the outside shots. We must have hit a button or something.

Everyone but Joel and I decided to drive down to the souvenir shop before dinner to shop for people and get a picture of Gabriel in the shark's mouth. (No beach trip would be complete without it!) A friend of Tia Sandie's from college, Gilbert, came by to say hello, meet Joel for the first time, and then take Sandra out for dinner. We got the kids to bed after dinner and started packing everything up. This was a sad time because Jav is trying to sell the condo and this will probably be the last time to visit, other than cleaning up once it sells. He stood on the balcony for a long time, and I knew his heart was aching. Buying that condo had been a dream of his for a long time and he has so many happy family memories there, not just from his immediate family but of relatives coming up from Mexico to stay, and then finally of me and the boys. But it is becoming more trouble and expense than it is worth, and it's something we have to do in order for me to keep staying at home for now. All I could do was give him a big hug.

We left for San Antonio the next morning, with everybody a little melancholy about going home. And about that 7 hour drive. Ugh. We stopped for lunch at what's quickly become a favorite of mine: Bill Miller BBQ. It was here that Tia Sandie decided she finally figured out who Joel reminded her of: John Wayne. We had a really good laugh over that one. Then we had one of the funniest things on the trip happen when everybody was loading up in the car to leave, but it really was one of those "had to be there" moments and is too elaborate and confusing to explain. We all had tears rolling down our face when we finally headed out again. Those are the moments we'll remember for the rest of our lives, and how stories get passed down.

When we arrived in San Antonio, we unpacked the car and decided to rest and clean up a bit before heading across the street to Mi Tierra's (pictured above) for dinner. We had some issues with our hotel room. I found a beer bottle cap on the floor, and then we noticed Joel's little feet were BLACK from crawling around on the carpet for only about 15 minutes or so. YUCK!!!!!! We didn't let him down again after that. We could only hope that the bedding was cleaner than the floors (something we just tried not to think about). On a lighter note, one of the neatest things on this trip happened when Jav discovered the little guy below, a bat, living up under the second floor roof of the motel. Gabriel is really into bats right now so was really excited to see an actual one on this trip. We never saw it fly away, but once it got dark he was stretching out his wings like he was going to start his nighttime hunting. It was amazing how much bigger he got once his wings were all untucked.

We had a fantastic time at dinner, then walked around the marketplace for awhile. Tia Sandie bought Gabriel a little guitar. We watched some kids riding the mechanical bull. We stopped and listened to a mariachi band, which Gabriel loved. I danced with him for two songs, which we both loved. I really couldn't believe Joel was maintaining any sense of calm though all of this considering he still didn't feel well, but he seemed to love seeing all the colors and hearing all the sounds. We made our way back to our rooms and ate churros for that special sugar rush just before bedtime. Gabriel kept wanting to play his guitar so we had to bribe him with watching TV until he fell asleep. We found a Lenny Kravitz concert that he and Jav watched until he finally conked out.

The next morning some of us had been hoping for a really good breakfast before heading home, but the wait anywhere was 45 minutes plus since we got going so slowly. We walked around the main indoor market place, and Gabriel's Tita bought him a real set of bongo drums (he had a toy one that he had torn up playing with real drumsticks at home). We had one last pass around the outdoor market, then loaded up and headed home.

I don't think Joel will remember this trip, but I'm sure Gabriel will remember much of it. It was very special to take with Jav's parents and sister. I really want to take a trip with my parents sometime in the future because it just makes that grandparent/kid relationship even closer to spend that much time together. (What a shameless hint, Mom!)