My 5-year-old boy

Gabriel turned 5 in September. This is the only picture I have from his actual birthday day. We decided to wait until after our beach trip to have his party, so we tried to make this day special. He got one present and the CD I made for him (Gabriel's rockin' CD, of course) before we left for school. I hoped that one day I would introduce Gabriel to Green Day, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin and the like, but I never imagined it would be as early as five! They had his party at school. After school at his Tita and Tito's house, Tita had made him cupcakes and we sang Happy Birthday to him. We stopped at my mom and dad's on the way to soccer practice and they gave him a card and birthday hugs. When the coaches found out it was his birthday, the entire team sang Happy Birthday to him. We left soccer practice early to go eat dinner at Campo Verde, here the food is mediocre at best, but the two trains running constantly around the entire, festive restaurant are a huge draw. He had a great birthday!

We didn't have his party until mid-October, which was really weird. But we had beautiful weather for our Scooby-Doo Bouncy House Extravaganza!

I took advantage of our Halloween decorations already being up and just added a few Scooby Doo things to fit the theme.

The monstrosity in our backyard. I was just praying that they didn't say we had too many trees and needed to put it in the front yard.

Cade and Gabriel bouncing away.

One of Gabriel's new friends, Aidan, who attends our church, was determined to get in on this wagon ride!

Aha, I see your plan, Mommy. Tools to help you cook disguised as a birthday present. I'm on to you!

A happy boy, not just because of the Shaun the Sheep DVD. The party was really fun. I even had time to mingle and play some ping pong, and really enjoyed myself. I can't believe it's been five years since this sweet boy was born. He is so sweet and thoughtful, very caring of his little brother, smart as a whip (starting to read Level 1 readers pretty well), and has a terrific sense of humor. I love him so, so much.

San Antonio

One thing I forgot to write in my Padre post: When Gabriel had just turned one, we took him to Padre for the first time. Halfway through that trip he started walking on his own. This trip, Joel's constant stream of baby babble started turning into actual words. So one kid walking and one kid talking makes for some pretty powerful memories of a place! Joel woke us up the morning we headed to San Antonio with a loud, "APPLE!".

I have to brag about how well these boys did in the car on our trip. We brought Gabriel's practice drum so he could play in the car. He made up countless songs, music and lyrics, from that back seat. All of them Rockin, of course! Joel is so well trained that when he started to get sleepy, he would just quietly hum to himself until he fell asleep. You just can't ask for better kids than that.

Gabriel begged us to stop at the crazy, quirky, giant souvenir place on the highway back to reality. He didn't want to go in, just see the King Kong up close. I love the picture below. The sky is beautiful and it looks like a real dinosaur.

The trip was exhausting. We could see our hotel in San Antonio but couldn't get to it (what is with that crazy highway system?) Went to Chili's for dinner, Target for diapers and then tumbled into bed.

We got up to head to Sea World in the morning. I was surprised at the size of the crowd at that time of year until I realized they were doing their Halloween thing.

Here's Gabriel feeding a seal lion, which is in the picture before this one. We saw the silly show with the otter and the walrus, then made our way over to the Killer Whales.

They take my breath away.

Penguins! Joel had fallen asleep and was getting really banged up in his stroller, so Jav carried him for awhile. I thought it was so cute that when we got to the Penguin house, he sat in a cool (albeit fishy-smelling) corner with his baby asleep on his shoulder, just like a daddy penguin would have.

One complaint I have about Sea World (besides the ridiculous prices for everything) is the food selection is awful. How can a place like that not have anyplace that sells quesadillas or grilled cheese sandwiches? (The only two foods Joel will eat out). We decided to leave to find someplace we could all eat, even though we could have stayed much longer. We detoured through the Sesame Street amusement park on the way out. Jav took Gabriel on his first roller coaster trip. And Joel and I stood in a long line to ride the Elmo merry-go-round. He was sweaty, cranky, and hungry, but still managed to shout out "Melmo!" everytime he saw him.

Two boys who have had enough of Sea World!

That night we went for an early swim before dinner in the hotel swimming pool. It wasn't heated and was REALLY cold. I told Jav that Joel would probably scream bloody murder if we put him in that water. He proceeded to make a liar out of me and splashed and swam around for about 45 minutes. I guess Sea World inspired him to swim like a fish. Gabriel and I had to get out because our teeth wouldn't stop chattering. Wimps!

That night was a big Ranger game, so we ordered pizza to the room and had a pizza picnic on the floor. It was a great ending to our fantastic, memory-making trip.

Now, I have to try to get caught up on everything else that's happened in October and November.

South Padre

Aaaaaaahhhhhh. The beach. Well, at first it wasn't so relaxing. I don't know if everyone is this way, but it takes me at least a day to get used to the hot, sticky, sandy, salty mess that is the beach. And then I embrace it and love it again. Joel didn't like it one bit until the last day when it was finally cooler and cloudier. Gabriel loved it from the moment we stepped off the walkway into the sand. He loved riding the waves on the Boogie Board.

That last cloudy day was so much more fun. We each took a kid and walked way out on the sandbar to wave jump. The waves were bigger that far out, and Gabriel got a little scared. Then Gabriel and I made a volcano in front of our sand castle while Joel and Jav played soccer behind us.

We always had so much to carry that I would send them on ahead to look for a good spot while I finished packing everything up and would go down 10 minutes later. My first moment of the trip that I will hopefully always remember is walking down the beach boardwalk to find my three men, and seeing their silhouettes with the ocean behind them. And then Joel would spot me and run as fast as those little chubby legs could carry him to meet me. Love those boys more than I can put into words.

We finally learned that the easiest way to REALLY get all the sand off of us before we went back to the condo was to take a detour in the pool. It was really refreshing.

We would have lunch and then nap time for everyone. Except that we had the rotten luck of having workmen putting a new floor in the condo above ours. I can't describe the noise level. They were using a jackhammer, for gosh sakes! They would start working at 10 and finish up around 4. The first day nap time was a disaster. The only thing that made me feel better was that Jav took the boys to run some errands and I got to sit BY MYSELF and READ A BOOK. This never happens at home. I luckily had a great book club book, "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand." I couldn't put it down. The second two days we came up with a better nap strategy. We turned on the fan for the A/C, the bathroom vent fan, and ran a humidifier that we found in our storage closet that we had left last year. It worked! Successful naps in the cave.

After nap we would regroup and head down to the pool. We were thrilled for the boys to get to practice their swimming. I'm feel so proud/lucky that neither of them have ever been afraid to get their heads wet or put their ears under the water. Joel finally conquered his bad habit of opening his mouth every time I tried to put him underwater. Progress! I did so much swimming I was afraid I'd be sore the next day. But nope, nothing. Gotta love that stress free workout for your muscles! Then we would get a movie started while we got cleaned up to keep the boys occupied. We'd have dinner, then go back to the beach. This was my favorite part of the day. One day we built a gigantic sand castle, and Gabriel kept running to fill up the bucket to get water in the moat (pictured below). It never held any water, it just sank back down every time. What is the trick to that? The next night we took a flashlight and looked for crabs, at least for the 2o minutes we had before the flashlight batteries died.

Then we'd go back to the condo and watch the rest of the movie we started before dinner while we ate ice cream. Man, do I ever love vacations. That first night was the first time we had ever watched a movie together (Monsters Inc.), all of us, from start to finish. These days were so fun, but every night Gabriel would get a little home sick for his bed.

Snacks on the beach. Yum!

After having a thunderstorms on and off during our last afternoon, we decided not to do the pool and instead decided to treat ourselves to dinner out (as long as beer was served, we figured we could get through a restaurant meal with Joel). We headed to a typical souvenir shop on the island for t-shirts and one toy for each boy. Then onto Port Isabel, a funky beach town that I just love even better than Padre, to have dinner at the Pirate's Landing. Jav and his family always used to eat there on their vacations because it was one of his mom's favorite places to go. An example of Port Isabel's funkiness is that they had alternating decorations on each major corner of the main drag, going from El Dia de Los Muertos (skeletons riding bicicles), and traditional Halloween decorations. Very cool. Wish I would have thought to take a picture.

How good can you get? The bay, the bridge, and a salty dog pirate all in the same shot.

Joel cracked us up by starting his 2-year-old version of sparkling dinner conversation with a little girl sitting at the table behind us. He just talked and talked and talked to her! She was around 5 or 6, and loved it. Both boys were pretty well behaved and the food was good. How can you go wrong with a place that serves french fries for the kids in a paper pirate ship?

We walked next door to a funky ice cream shop that was run by the coolest girl, someone you would only meet in a funky beach town. I wanted to stay and talk to her for awhile, she was so charming. We told her that we were remembering the last time Jav and I ate at Pirate's Landing a freak cold front had blown in that day and even though the temperature was still in the 60's, the wind chill was like 30-something. She agreed that the wind off the water could be bone chilling cold. She also told me that almost all Europeans, Mexican nationals, and South Americans ordered pistachio-almond ice cream (my favorite that I had ordered). How cosmopolitan of me!

We then took our ice cream and walked over to the Port Isabel lighthouse. Here is some history. G & J loved running up and down the huge hill that it sits on. My second lovely moment that will be burned in my brain forever was to see them as the sun was going down behind them. We just had to take some pictures.

Aye Matey! Cap'n Gabriel is after ye!

When we got back to the condo, it was too late to make one more evening trip to the beach. We were all a little sad about it. We have definitely made some wonderfully happy memories in this condo. It's very bittersweet to see it go.

Next, on to San Antonio!