2013 Vacation Day 7: Walking into the tourist trap

Mornings are hard on vacation.  The kids just want to get going yet there is so much to do to get ready for the day.  Friday was no exception.  We ended up taking them down to the car and putting them in their seats.  Then I went back up to the hotel room and finished packing everything up.  Brandon stayed with the car and arranged everything.  Then we traded places and he brought down all the heavy stuff and put it away.

We didn't even bother with the tiny "continental breakfast" the hotel provided.  Instead we went to Denny's because I've wanted to go there with the kids for awhile.  I don't know why I thought that would be fun.

We used up all of our "polite kid time" waiting to be seated, and waiting for our food.  Lydia remembered her love for sugar packets, and Charlotte discovered "blocks."  (There was no way I was telling her there was jelly inside.) 

By the time the food arrived the kids were ready to go.  They hardly ate the pancakes and eggs we'd ordered for them.  But they did love the orange juice.

I scarfed my food down and then took Charlotte and Derrick (who was basically screaming from tiredness) out to the car.  It had been fun, but it's not something I want to try again for a year or two.

After everyone was situated we drove into downtown San Antonio.  We were planning on seeing two things there: the Riverwalk and the Alamo.  We took the long way on the side streets so Derrick could get a little nap.

We had a little bit of trouble finding the Alamo.  I knew I should have had a more detailed city map.  But soon we saw huge crowds of people and we knew we were in the right place.  We also knew we might have a big problem for the day.

Brandon and I usually try to go on vacation in May.  That's the month of our anniversary, and it's also a month that kids are still in school.  Usually we'll be hanging out at places with a bunch of retired and/or foreign people.  When we spent 10 days in Southern Utah in 2010 we hardly heard unaccented English the whole time.

But this year we'd inadvertently scheduled our vacation for the same week as Spring Break.  All week we'd been dealing with large groups of people.  For the most part though we had been in places that could handle large groups of people.  Not so in the area around the Alamo.  It was a bad combination of two of our least favorite things: a major city and a tourist trap.

We took a "quick" (20 minute) drive around the block to get our bearings and see if there was a cheap place to park.  We settled on the RiverCenter Mall parking terrace.  It was $4 for the first hour and $3 for every 20 minutes after that, but it was cheaper than the lots that wanted $15 up front.

Lindsey had warned me that the triple stroller wouldn't work very well on the river walk which had a lot of stairs.  We thought that maybe we could still use it to go see the Alamo, but I wasn't sure it would even fit in the parking lot elevators.  So we just used the umbrella stroller for Derrick.  I held tightly to the girls hands as we navigated through the mall and down to the Riverwalk.

The Riverwalk is what I wanted to see most.  The San Antonio river flows through the center of the city and has been incorporated as a major part of the city.  Restaurants an other businesses line the river.  There are paths on the bank of the river.  It's all gorgeous.

I would have loved to walk all around the river and see everything up close, but I knew that wouldn't be possible with all the kids in tow - even with the triple stroller.  Fortunately, Lindsey told me about the boats that provide 25 minute river tours.

Brandon and Derrick waited in line for the tickets while I took the girls on a little walk over some of the bridges.  Then in a relatively short amount of time, considering how many people there were, we were on a boat on the river.

San Antonio is OLD.  It has history dating back like 300 years.  There is a huge Spanish and catholic influence in the city too.  Everything had a story.

For the most part the kids loved the boat.  They'd talked about it whenever I asked them what we were going to do on vacation and as far as I know it was what they expected.  For some reason the girls like to say "Ewwww" every time we went under a bridge.  

I'm so glad we decided to see the city this way.  It was a good way to get a quick idea of what the city was like.

Here is what the boat looked like.  We sat in the middle so we didn't have to worry about any of the kids taking a dive over the edge.  

Even 25 minutes ended up being a little too long for our kids.  The last 10 or so minutes were a little tense as we tried to keep them all happy.  Charlotte and Lydia ended up sitting on the floor between our legs.  Oh well, at least they were young enough that their tickets had been free so it wasn't a waste.  Brandon and I enjoyed it.

We got off the boat and went to find somewhere to eat.  We found this place that we perfect because it didn't have water next to it and no one else was there.

The kids had a blast playing in the leaves.  All week long Brandon had been in charge of the food.  I liked being able to sit back and see what foods he'd packed in the backpack for that day.  I'd always be like, "oh I totally forgot we brought these!"

The kids played around for a long time.  Lydia ended up with dirt all over her face so eventually we went into the mall to find a bathroom to clean her up in and do diaper changes.  This mall must have been designed by the same company that did City Creek Center in Salt Lake.  There was ONE bathroom for the whole main level of the mall.  I had to wait to use it. Then I had to wait while a new mom changed her 2 month old's diaper.  I was fighting an urge to just do it for her.  In the amount of time it took her to change his diaper I could have had all three of my kids done.  

After FOREVER we finally were ready to get going again.  Brandon took the girls on their first ever escalator ride.  They liked it.  

We went outside and started walking towards the Alamo.  The Alamo hadn't been on my list of things to see in San Antonio - or really ever.  But it kept coming up when I talked to people about things to do in Texas.  When I found out it was the most visited landmark in Texas I figured we'd better go see it.  But when we got close to it we realized that there was a huge line of people waiting to go into the Alamo. Most of the people in this picture are waiting in line.

Looking back, I really should have put two and two together.  "Most visited landmark" and "spring break" should have sent alarm bells off in my head.  I was content to "Remember the Alamo" and just take this picture.  

The line turned out to be just for the actual Alamo.  There was a whole Temple Square-like area around the Alamo with other buildings we could explore.  We went in there, but really the only thing of interest to us were these orange fish in the water.

In case you are wondering, the Alamo is where David Bowie and Jimmy Buffet took a stand against Santana and died.  Or something like that.  I really could have cared less about what the Alamo was.  Maybe I would have bothered to learn about it if I wasn't dealing with tired kids and a sore back - maybe.

It was a really pretty area and I'm sure one day we will come back and have a better time.  

The girls were beyond tired so Brandon carried both of them the two or so blocks back to the mall.  They were asleep by the time we were in the mall.

We referred to this as "triple stroller appreciation day" and got ready to get the heck out of there.  We "only" had to pay $11 for parking, but it took us FOREVER to get out of the parking terrace because the car in front of us couldn't get their card to work in the payment machine.  We ended up backing out of that lane and going out another.  We were so happy to finally be free of the tourist trap.

San Antonio is only about 2 1/2 hours from home.  So in theory we could have just gone home.  But there were some things I wanted to see on the way home.  So I'd booked a hotel in a town called New Braunfels which was only 10 miles away from the city.  We drove out of town on the back streets so the kids could sleep.

As we drove we talked about random things.  Brandon told me some story from his mission that I've heard before.  He has this way of prefacing stories by saying, "Did I ever tell you about Elder So and So on my mission?"  And I'm always like "YES, why do you even ask anymore!" but in reality I play along and say, "maybe, what's the story?"

You know how normally cute little idiosyncrasies can bug the heck out of you after you've spent a week together.  Well, I decided to bring up the fact that Brandon always says "did I ever tell you about . . ." at the beginning of his stories.  I said, "Look, for the record you have told me all your mission stories.  So you don't need to ask me if you've ever told me about Elder Starky or whoever."

To which Brandon replied with a smile, "You think you've heard all my stories, but you haven't heard all my stories.  Like the time I was walking around with Elder Starky, and ran into a lady who was selling all sorts of jams and she even had a tomato jam.  See you haven't heard them all."

I started laughing.  He was right I'd never heard that story.  We laughed together about that for at least 10 minutes straight.  Brandon said, "I hope your happy.  I was saving that one for a special occasion."

We made it to New Braunfels and found our hotel, the Microtell Inn and Suites.  Through a little booking error I hadn't included the kids as guests at the hotel.  I'd noticed the mistake a few days before our trip.  But when I'd called Hotwire I got a message that they were experiencing a high volume of calls.  I never found time to call back.  I figured we'd all just have an adventure with one bed.

I checked us into the hotel.  Took a quick peek at the room (small, but not tiny) and went back to the jeep.  It was only 5:00 and neither Brandon or I felt like spending the next several hours in the hotel room with the kids.  So we set off to find a park or something.

We ended up following signs to a place called Landa Park.  It reminded me a lot of Liberty Park in Salt Lake - only with a river running through it.  We let the kids get out and run around on the equipment.

We'd been snacking on our supplies of snack food all day so we went super hungry for any sort of dinner.  There was a mini-train running through the park and Brandon ran over to the station to see how much it was.  It was $2.50 a ticket so we took all the kids over to the station to ride the train.

Except Brandon had failed to notice that they only took cash, and we had spent the last of our cash earlier.  Charlotte was so disappointed when we turned around and left the train.  I had to tell her over and over again that we would be right back.  We just had to go get some money.

We drove to at CVS pharmacy and Brandon went inside to buy something and get cash back.  Then we hurried back to the park and bought tickets for the train.  The girls were so excited to have tickets.

Derrick was happy to be on the train.

I pretended to punch the girls tickets like the conductor does on the Polar Express.  Soon the real conductor of this train came to collect our tickets.  The girls were scared of him and they didn't want to give him their tickets.  He didn't help things by ripping the tickets in half after we gave them to him.  The girls still haven't stopped talking about when the "scary ductor - rip ticket"

Soon the train was moving and the ripped tickets were (mostly) forgotten.  

The ride was actually pretty long. All the kids loved it.  Here's Derrick looking like the Mayor of Munchkin Land.

After the train ride we found a picnic bench so we could eat the treats that Brandon had bought to get cash back.  The were Klondike bars that had melted a little bit more than anticipated.

The girls didn't mind one bit.  By the way, this was dinner - gotta love vacations.

Then we fed bread to the ducks.  (We ate some of the bread for dinner too.)  Lydia would yell, "DUCK!" Every time she threw bread into the water.

When we ran out of bread the girls started throwing sticks and rocks into the water.  

It was such a perfect evening and we didn't want it to end yet.  We took the kids on a little walk to see a tree that we'd passed while riding the train.

It was a really cool tree.  Charlotte and Lydia spent a lot of time chasing squirrels.  

 We started slowly walking back to the car, but none of us were in a hurry.  This whole evening had been so nice after the hectic day. Derrick was out of the stroller and crawling around.  Charlotte was pushing the empty stroller.  She kept stopping to put pretend rabbits and squirrels into the stroller.  I just sat down on the sidewalk and watched the kids play around.  The train went by one last time and we all waved at everyone on it.

Then it got dark and it was time to go back to the hotel. The kids had all ended up very dirty so i gave them baths while "Sherpa Dad" carried all our stuff in from the car.  We tried putting the kids right to bed, but they were still a little wired so we watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

When that was over we put the kids to bed. Our room had this little window seat that we tried to get the girls to sleep on.  Charlotte wanted to, but Lydia didn't, and they both ended up in the bed anyway.  I laid at the bottom of the bed. I told Brandon there was room for him, but he said all the beds we'd slept on all week had been too soft and he'd rather have the floor.  Derrick started out on the window seat, but when he woke up fussing I brought him in with me so he wouldn't fall off.  Then Brandon took the window seat.

I woke up around 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I got on the laptop and checked my e-mail and facebook for the first time in a week.  Then I climbed back in with all the kids and fell asleep again.

2013 Vacation Day 6: An Amazing Day at Sea World

I can't remember when I found out that Brandon could get free tickets to Sea World. I think even before we moved to Texas Lindsey told me that military members and up to 3 family members get in for free.  Whenever it was I immediately started thinking about how much fun the girls would have seeing all the fishes and other animals.  They are pretty obsessed with the movie Finding Nemo so I knew Sea World would be amazing to them.  I planned on us taking them on a day trip down to Sea World in San Antonio sometime in March or April.  So when Brandon's leave was moved to March it was a no brainer to include Sea World in our vacation.

The kids slept in again (I highly recommend going on vacation the week that daylight savings time starts).  When they woke up we hurried and got dressed and went down to the breakfast area of the hotel.  

This was actually the most pathetic excuse for a continental breakfast I have ever been served. Our only food options were muffins, stale bread (maybe it was pre-toasted), and orange juice.  There were only two tables each with only two chairs.  I would have been ticked except I was too excited for Sea World to care.  So we all ate muffins - which were surprisingly filling, drank juice, and went back to our room.

 I have to say that the breakfast was my only complaint about the hotel.  It was really pretty and in a great location near Sea World (which is why I picked it.)

 We hurried and got the diaper bag packed for the day.  Then we left all of our stuff in the room and drove to Sea World.  We were planning on running the kids and ourselves ragged. We'd booked the room for two nights so we wouldn't have to worry about unpacking that night.

The roller coasters at Sea World were visible from the street in front of our hotel and so we didn't have to drive far to get there.  Soon we were going through the gate and we were in the park.

We had planned on avoiding crowds by heading to the back of the park to see the penguins first, but we ended up getting sucked into a pack of people all headed toward the area where the Killer Whales preformed.  I noticed that the show One Ocean with the whales was going to start so we parked the stroller and got the kids out.  We walked over to the stadium/water tank.

I wish we could have got a picture of how we looked as we walked.  Brandon held Derrick in his arms and held Charlotte's hand.  Lydia held Charlotte's other hand and mine.  It was so fun to be holding hands and walking as a family.  We went on a little walk to see some flamingos.

And then we went into the Shamu Theater.  We had to wait for about 20 minutes for the show to start.  They started the show by having all the military men and women stand up.  Brandon stood up and I seriously started crying as all the people in the stadium clapped for him and the other people who were standing.  

Then the show started.  I don't know what I was expecting, but I was blown away by what the whales could do.  They flipped, jumped, and of course splashed.  

 The kids were fascinated.  They loved watching all the tricks.

 Even Derrick's attention was focused on the whales.

 All the rows were labeled "splash zone" so I was a little worried we'd get wet.  But after a while it was apparent that we were sitting far enough back that we weren't in danger of getting wet.  The people in the first few rows got soaked.

 Here are all the kids enjoying the show.

 Seeing the killer whales preform was a perfect way to start off our visit to Sea World.

After the whales we went to the back of the park and saw the penguins.  There was a moving sidewalk that we could ride on.  It took us past the large area where the penguins live.  

 Derrick loved the penguins.  He made lots of happy grunting sounds.  There was one penguin that stared at Derrick and Derrick stared right back as we slid along the sidewalk.

 Sea World has a penguin webcam on their website and we've watched it every few days for the past few weeks.  The girls were so excited to see the penguins in person.

 After riding on the sidewalk a few times we went to the observation area behind the sidewalk.  The kids liked sitting on this wall and watching the penguins (and the sidewalk) some more.

 Believe it or not the whales and the penguins had taken up almost 2 hours.  It was getting close to lunchtime so we went to find somewhere to eat.  Here is a view of one of the roller coasters.  The kids loved watching the roller coaster cars. I know that if they had been big enough they would have loved to go on the rides.

 Once again we had the kids in the triple stroller.  And once again I felt like we were another exhibit.  We even had a mom of triplets come up to us and ask us where we got the stroller.

We found a picnic/play area so we let the girl run around while Derrick took a nap.  

The girls loved playing on the playground.  

 When they were done there we all had a little snack of crackers.  Sea World doesn't allow large amounts of outside food into the park, but they do allow snack size portions.  The tables were bar height so the girls ended up making their own little table out of the foot rest under the table.

 While we ate I studied the map and show schedule.  I wanted us to go see a show called Azul.  So once everyone was ready we put the kids back in the stroller and went to the "Beluga Stadium."  Apparently everyone else in the park had the same idea because when we got there we couldn't find anywhere to sit.  The girls were getting incredibly sleepy anyway so we decided it was time to leave and go take naps.

We got our hands stamped for reentry and left the park.  We had planned on taking the kids back to the hotel for nap time, but they were asleep before we even made it to the jeep.  We knew from prior experience that they would probably just wake up once we got back to the hotel.  We decided to keep our close parking spot and just take naps in the car.  Derrick woke back up so he hung out in the front seat with me and Brandon while we ate a real lunch (consisting entirely of snack foods).

 We constructed this little sun shade to keep Lydia out of the sun.

 Here's Charlotte all tuckered out.

The girls slept for about an hour and a half.  When they woke up we fed them "lunch" too and then headed back into the park.  

Our next stop was the coral reef aquarium building.  They had a large tank full of fish.  One whole wall of the observation room was a window into the tank.  My favorite fish to watch were the sting rays.  

 The girls were excited to find "Dori."  She's the little blue fish between them in this picture.  I always thought Dori looked a little cartoony in Finding Nemo, but that's exactly how the real fish looks.  (Sorry I don't care enough about fish to know what kind she is)

 There was also a whole other tank full of sharks.  For the past several weeks Charlotte kept telling me that she didn't want to see the "scary sharks."  I told her that there would be a window between her and the sharks.  When she saw them for real she wasn't afraid of them at all.

 Derrick had fallen back asleep on our walk to the aquarium.  He stayed asleep even when we got him out of the stroller.  He missed out on most of the fish.

 In addition to the large tanks they also had smaller tanks.

 And one of those tanks had Nemo!  The girls were so excited to find him and "Daddy fish."

 I was surprised by how small clown fish actually are.  They were about the size of goldfish.

 Here are the girls enjoying the fish.  It was really dark in the rooms.  The only light came from the aquariums.  That made it easy to see the fish, but hard to take pictures.

 Derrick woke up at the very end and so he was able to see some fish too.

When we were done with the aquarium we went back to the Beluga Stadium and got good seats for the Azul show.  

 There was a pre-show with a guy who kept getting squirted by a fountain as he tried to find a seat.  It took place in the audience and we couldn't see it too well, but it was still funny.  Then that guy sat down right above the water tank and the show started.  He turned out to be a pretty big part of the show.  I guess he was supposed to represent a common person's interaction with the show.

The show started out with Beluga whales swimming with people.  Someone behind me kept saying, "Look at the dolphins."  I kept thinking, "oh come on, even I know they are beluga whales."

 The show had a lot of "Vegas" elements.  One of my favorite parts was when a bunch of guys came out and started doing cool dives off of diving boards that just kept getting higher and higher.  One guy jumped from the ceiling of the stadium.  Derrick flinched when that guy jumped.  It was like he was thinking, "Mom, that man is falling!"

 Here are some real dolphins doing tricks.

 I have to say it's a good thing we went to the zoo before coming to Sea World.  There is no way sleeping lions could have lived up to the energy in this theatre.

 A lady dressed as a bird did some cool ribbon stunts from a ring in the ceiling.  The "common man" guy fell in love with her.

 This was probably the coolest part of all.  The diver guys came out and started swinging on these large swings.

When they got enough momentum one of the divers would get launched into the air and do a trick dive into the pool.

 Here is a Beluga pushing a swimmer around.

 At the very end they had a finale with all the animals.  They let birds fly around, the belugas did a trick or two, and all the dolphins jumped.  I'm impressed that Brandon caught a picture of all the dolphins jumping.

Once the show was over we tried to decide what to do next.  Lydia had been telling me she was "sleeeeeppppyyyy" in between every segment of the Azul show.  But during each segment she'd sat with rapt attention.  I've long suspected that Lydia just says "sleepy" because she doesn't know how to say, "I'm bored." So I knew we didn't need to go home.  We still hadn't seen the Sea Lions so we went up to their area.  

 There was a Sea Lion show starting right when we got there.  The theatre was crowded and the description of the show sounded boring to me.  I didn't want to try to sit through it with the kids.  So we just went down to see all the Sea Lions that weren't in the show.  (Which was a lot)

 We had the whole area to ourselves.  The girls laid on this rock wall and watched the Sea Lions for a long time.

 When we were done with the Sea Lions we went to check out the dolphin feeding pool.  All day long it had been really busy and we'd avoided it.  It was about to close in a few minutes and I hoped that meant it would be less crowded. I was right.  We were able to get a spot on the wall lining the pool.  The girls watched the dolphins for a second or two, but soon lost interest.

 We could have gone home at this point.  It was 6:00 and we had seen all the animals that Sea World has.  But there was no real reason to leave yet.  I checked the show schedule and saw that there would be a different Shamu show at 7:30 called Shamu Rocks.  Brandon and I figured we could get the kids to hang on until then.  So we strapped them in the stroller and started walking around the park to kill time.

We ended up sitting right under a roller coaster and watching the cars go up the chain hill and then race down.  It was a huge roller coaster.  The track in the background is part of the one we were watching.  We sat there for a long time and enjoyed the show while eating crackers.

 At 6:45 we went into the Shamu Theater to get good seats.  We decided to sit in the actual splash zone.  At 7:00 an announcer guy came out and started whipping up the excitement.  They played rock songs over the sound system and got everyone in the mood to have fun.  At about 7:15 a guy in a Shamu suit came out and started dancing.  He was near us and Derrick couldn't get enough of him.  He laughed at him the whole time he was dancing.

The actual show started at 7:30 with Shamu jumping out of the middle of the tank and punching a ball hanging from the ceiling.  After that it was a bunch of tricks by Shamu and the other whales.  All of it was set to rock music.  It was so much fun.  The girls clapped and yelled the whole time.

Since we were in the Splash Zone we didn't risk having the camera out.  We didn't get wet at first. There were people a few rows ahead of us who were getting soaked.  Then at almost the very end two whales swam over to our side and slammed their tales into the water.  We were immediately drenched!  The kids started bawling.  The whales slapped the water again, but this time I remembered to shield us with the blanket I'd brought.  The show ended and we calmed the kids down.  The were upset about getting wet, but then they started saying things like, "whales, splash, wow, wet, cool, silly."  They haven't stopped talking about how neat it was to get splashed by a whale.  Lydia likes to yell, "SPLASH!" really loud when ever she talks about it.  Here is how we all looked after the show.  Good thing we kept the camera hidden - right?

 There was one final thing I wanted to do before we left the park.  There was a kid area that we had avoided all day.  Thanks to Spring Break it had been swarming with kids all day and I hadn't wanted to deal with the crowds.  But the crowds had died down and I wanted to take the kids on the Merry Go Round.

 The ride rules were pretty strict about every child needing an adult if they were going to ride on one of the horses.  But there were two benches that we could sit on.  We were all sitting on one bench when the strict ride operators told us that there could only be 4 people on a bench.  I went over to the other bench with Derrick, but the people over there threw a hissy fit to the operator about their special needs daughter and how much she wanted to ride and blah blah blah.  It wasn't that big of a deal to me so I just got off the ride and watched.

The girls loved the ride, and I had fun watching them.  (And the family on the other bench didn't even smile the whole ride.  So much for how important this was to them.)

 By this time it was about 8:30.  The park didn't close until 10:00, but we couldn't think of anything else to do.  The kids were starting to show signs of being tired so we slowly walked out of the park.

 It had been such a wonderful day.  We'd been able to see and do everything that we wanted to.  And the kids had loved everything too.  I can't imagine a better day.

We drove back to the hotel and cooked our TV dinners in the microwave.  The girls like their mac'n'cheese, but it was obvious they were exhausted.

Lydia asked for a bottle and fell asleep almost as soon as she was done with it.  Charlotte wandered around and played with toys, but she fell asleep as soon as Brandon put her into bed.  

 Even Derrick fell asleep easily.  I'd laid him across the chair and ottoman thinking that he'd roll over and try to crawl away right away.  But instead he just turned his head to the left and started breathing deeply.  I haven't seen him do that since back when I used to swaddle him.

 Brandon and I stayed up and watched a movie that we'd picked up at Redbox when we'd stopped for gas on the way back to the hotel.  The movie was Looper which my usually trust worth movie review guy had highly recommended.  I thought that Brandon would like it because it involved one of his favorite movie subjects, Time Travel.  It also had Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt so I figured it would be good.  Unfortunately, it also involved a really creepy horror movie type farm setting that my movie review guy forgot to mention.  It was interesting, but I can't recommend it.

Still it was nice to enjoy some adult time with Brandon while the kids slept.  These vacations can get a little draining for us so if we spend all our energy focusing on the kids needs and ignoring each other.  So it was worth it for the togetherness.  (Even if half the time we were talking about what was wrong with the movie.)

My only regret about the whole day is that we can only get free tickets once a year.  I wish we could go again and again.