Kit and I worked out a pretty good Christmas schedule, where we had the girls in Austin with Kit and her parents on Christmas morning, and then I drove the girls to Houston on Christmas afternoon to see may parents for a few days.
The girls had not seen a lot of my parents lately. My parents have been going through a number of medical issues for the last year of so, and while I had made many solo trips to see them and help them, I hadn’t brought the girls for those trips. This time the girls got two spend two full days in Houston with them plus two partial days. This is the longest they have spent in Houston in years!
We took advantage of our full days by finally getting to Galveston, which I had been trying to do almost as long as Claire has been alive! We also hit the mall, in particular the American Girl store for Molly, and saw the 3D movie Sing. Sing was a really sweet movie and way better than crap like Home Alone 2, which we watched at home with my parents.
The girls loved Pleasure Pier in Galveston. My dad tagged along and mostly sat on benches while Claire, Molly, and I did rides. We got there early and played on the beach in the fog for a couple of hours before it opened. After Pleasure Pier, we went to Rainforest Cafe to live it up all the way. We made fun of inconsistencies on the menu, such as Jurassic-themed chicken nuggets. We also envisioned a Texas History themed restaurant, featuring Sam Houston’s Tennessee pulled pork and Santa Anna’s green enchiladas. (So wrong!) The we listened to the Anna Kendrick memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody, on the drive back to my parents’ house in Houston. It had drugs and sex all over the place. Talk about wrong! We eventually turned it off and just drove quietly back to Houston.
With the weather cooling off a bit and making it hard to to spend the day at Barking Springs, and Sno Beach shut down for the season, we’re having to move our weekend fun activities indoors. Today, we took Claire’s friend Susie to lunch at the always delicious Homeslice Pizza and then off to Pinballz arcade for some indoor fun. The girls had lot of fun playing ping pong and messing uncooked dough at Homeslice. And they did a crazy job as a team effort winning tickets at Pinballz, They won over 3000 tickets, with Susie digging into her own money for tokens after my budget had run out. They were picking rolls of 500 tickets out of the claw machines at will, and basically emptied one out in a matter of minutes. With the prize tickets, the girls each got a ping ping gun, plus an inflatable ninja doll and some miscellaneous small toys. We all went back to my place and had a ping pong gun fight and basically destroyed the place. We can have fun even when it’s not warm and sunny out!
What have Claire and Molly been doing with all their free time now that they’re out of school for the summer? Besides playing in the rain, having friends over, swimming, and watching Jessie, here are a few pics of their indoor activities so far this summer.
With all the rain we’ve been having lately, the backyard has turned into a water park for the girls. Molly, in particular, loves going outside to play, especially when it is raining. She likes when it is raining really hard best of all. She and Claire will spend hours at a time out there just splashing around and playing with their toys.
They even set up a water park for their My Little Pony toys. The park is inspired by Schlitterbahn and features a giant water slide with a big pool at the end of it. There is also a “natural pond”, which is basically a big puddle. And the Swamp of Doom in the muddy grass area. Claire made a map of the park and even added a snack stand for refreshments (it’s alternately a smoothie place, a fish taco place, or Benny’s Fish ‘n’ Chips).
Kit was schedule to run an audit at a hospital in downtown San Antonio on Monday, and she had a nice hotel room right across the street on the Riverwalk, so she invited the rest of the family along to enjoy a quick trip to S.A. We had lots of fun for a one-day trip, mostly exploring the Riverwalk, swimming, and eating. The girls did not want to leave on Monday morning after a final swim at the hotel, but I had to get back to work in the afternoon to catch up with the team on the happenings at Apple’s 2015 developer conference (WWDC).
Sister hug
Evening approaches on the river
Taking a break on the river
We logged many hours in this pool
Claire teaching Molly to swim
Checking out the Arneson River Theater
Understanding the grossness of digestion
Our guts on display at the Witte Museum
Nice view from the Witte
Molly tries rock climbing in cowboy boots and a dress at the Witte
We’ve been talking about trying geocaching for a while. Geocaching is a GPS-aided search for small containers hidden put there by other people for you to find. It is basically a crowdsourced outdoor exploration around town, in your neighborhood, or further out in nature. If this doesn’t make sense, see wikipedia.
Anyways, we didn’t know how to get started with geocaching. Kit saw that McKinney Falls State Park was offering a Geocaching 101 class, so we signed up. This would give us reason to check out this state park on the Southeast edge of town. A park ranger met us at the park and literally walked us through geocaching. She had four caches hidden and ready and gave us GPS units. She found the first one with us, and then set us out to find the others.
It was great wandering around the park looking for hidden containers. The girls enjoyed it, although they got tired by cache #4. We got to see Onion Creek, site of some serious floods a couple of years ago, and the upper McKinney Falls, which was flowing rapidly due to recent heavy rains. The open swim area had turned into a whitewater gusher. Kit and Claire were afraid of one of us falling in and drowning, but we kept our distance.
Claire’s absolute most favorite thing in the world is having a sleepover with her friends. We host sometimes but tend to get a little worn out juggling Claire’s friends’ needs with Molly’s, and with our work often bleeding into the weekends and getting into the way. Anyways, here’s a rare picture of Claire enjoying a sleepover at her friend Susie’s house.
Halloween fell on a Friday this year. Claire had been asking to have some friends sleep over for several weeks, and we decided to go for it on Halloween. Why not get all the craziness over in one night?
So Claire’s friend Susie came trick-or-treating with Claire and Molly and us parents. Claire’s friend Dylan had trick-or-treating commitments in her neighborhood a few blocks away but joined us afterwards for the sleepover.
Molly as Anna from Frozen
Claire and Susie ready to trick-or-treat
We did not expect anything but a lot of sugar- and friend-powered zaniness, and that is what we got. Many giggles were heard from Claire’s room. Her and Molly’s toys were spread all over the floor, so much so that they girls could not find anywhere to put the sleeping bags, so they all ended up sleeping in the hallway around 10:30 pm. Dylan got a lollipop stuck in her hair, which our dog Muffin tried to lick while Dylan was sleeping on the floor. Muffin also stole some of Dylan’s candy, which was on the floor too.
Molly got to sleep on the inflatable mattress in our bedroom, which she always enjoys despite of protests of “no fair” that she had to go to sleep before Claire and her friends.
The next morning there was a lot of running around, and candy wrappers could be found all over the house. The girls proposed to all take a bath together. That was too much; someone was going to get hurt in the tub or just drip water allover the house. And Kit and Molly were leaving for a Pre-K family gathering right around then. So the girls settled for making a haunted house out of cardboard in the back yard. It had fake candles, ketchup for blood, the whole works. They even put together a “play” about the haunted house complete with a storm and lightening.
Claire would spend the afternoon over at Susie’s house, making their time together over 24 hours. They even pushed for a second sleepover at Susie’s that night, or at least dinner. They had to settle for lunch together at Thundercloud with Susie’s dad and then back to much needed rest time with their families.
Well, Halloween doesn’t fall on the weekends that often, and I think we made the most of it!
After the big family meet-up in Siesta Key, the four of us headed towards Clearwater, Florida. While in Florida, we had to meet the most famous dolphin in the world: Winter! Winter is the real-life inspiration for the movie A Dolphin Tale, a favorite of 8-year-old girls around the globe. Claire had even donated some of her allowance money to Winter in the past. That is how much she likes Winter.
On the way up to Clearwater, we toured Sarasota a bit. We spent the morning at Selby Botanical Gardens, which Kit really enjoyed. The girls got to see some amazing tropical plants. Kit had also been scouting great local dining locations, and we ended up having some fantastic lunches at little restaurants like The Serving Spoon in Sarasota. We headed up to a family-ish resort called Tradewinds, in St. Pete’s Beach. It was not as cozy as our house in Siesta Key, but it was nice to have a swimming pool and a beach cabana. We did the paddle boats around the resort too, and the girls loved feeding the swans as they followed us. Kit nearly had a heart attack when she realized that her iPhone had slipped out of her pocket on the paddle boat. By almost freakish luck, the phone ended up safe and dry on a little inch-wide lip on the exterior of the boat. It was a quarter inch from becoming swan food.
Once in Clearwater, we spent most of the day at Winer’s home, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which is really a marine animal rescue and rehab hospital that suddenly got famous with the Dolphin Tale movie. Claire had talked about seeing Winter for years now. We got to see Winter floating around in her tank. The poor thing was indeed missing her tail and was somewhat lethargic. Having come all this way to Florida, Claire got do a special (as in expensive) “dolphin encounter” with Hope, who is Winter’s friend and apparently the star of the upcoming Dolphin Tale 2. Molly was too young to do the dolphin encounter but was familiar with the movie and enjoyed seeing Winter and all the sea animals. Molly got a Winter stuffed animal, unique with its missing tail.
After many hours at the Clearwater aquarium, we headed off for our last night of the trip, near the Tampa airport. Kit had picked out a local Greek restaurant for a nice final meal. When we finally fought our way there through the St. Petersburg sprawl, hungry and thirsty from a long hot day with only a small snack or two, the family restaurant was closed for two weeks for vacation. This was a disappointment to us all, especially our stomachs. Trying to avoid a small riot, Kit directed us to a family-owned Italian restaurant nearby. It was also closed for two weeks! We all started to complain bitterly, and Kit even went so far as to say that it was “Un-American” to just close like that. Late and now really hungry, we found a Chili’s on the iPhone and headed there, mostly on the grounds that it would probably be open and have, you know, food to eat. Mercifully, they were indeed open, and we stuffed ourselves on steak and pizza and even shared a big dessert.
Then next morning, we flew home. Claire and Molly spent the next two days resting up from our big, busy family vacation in sunny Florida.
It’s Winter, the real Winter!
Island shell hunting
Hey, it’s Hazel from “A Dolphin Tale”!
Even the littler creatures were fascinating
Claire’s dolphin encounter
Hope kisses Claire
Winter’s real fake tail
Claire playing with Hope
Feeding the swans from the paddle boats
Another day passed at the beach
Pass-a-Grille public beach
Claire at Paradise Grill, apparently in 1978.
Lunch at Paradise Grill.
Our hotel room was a total mess.
“We’ll go back to the beach later today, Molly.”
These girls are just trying to be cute!
Kit enjoyed the shady beach “cabana”
Molly’s goggles mysteriously return!
A reach beach hammock
Cooling off, resort style
Hey, it’s me and Kit together!
View of Sarasota Bay
A cool plant at Selby Gardens
Cool tree, cool kid
Those are some hungry fish
Another cool plant at Selby Gardens
The sunny pool
This shaded pool was handy
Final meal of the trip — Chili’s in St. Petersburg
The girls showing their fatigue on arrival at home.
McG Kids 