a family first

Well we Finally did it! We had a First Ever Family Vacation.

You know we were stressed out before because we were broke and struggling and having money definitely doesn’t make all the stress go away. If anything we have more and newer stress because of everything we have to deal with regarding buying a home, buying a car, and investing our money. There is soo much you have to deal with that we were just overwhelmed and felt like we were in shark waters. So to fix that…..

Off to Moody Gardens in Galveston, TX. Jim had went about 4 yrs ago, I say went. He had an offshore meeting of some type and the were staying at the hotel at Moody Gardens and he got to look around and ever since then he’s wanted to take all of us.

We decided to go around 7pm Thursday night, packed the kids, loaded the car and headed out. We made it to Galveston around midnight. We checked in and went to bed.

As always I was up way before anyone else. I ran downstairs and got them some of the free breakfast. Not a wide selection so the kids got cereal at least. We knew MG opened at 10 so we left the hotel around 9:30 so we could make sure we got there with plenty of time.

We also wanted to take the kids to the beach so they could play in the water and figured we could fit it all in, thinking we would be done w/ MG by 2pm. Yeah right!

We ended up getting the day passes because you could do more and was cheaper then paying for the 3 pyramids we wanted to do separately.

We started off with the Rainforest Pyramid…

I LOVE the smell in there. The fresh air, fresh dirt, gosh if I could bottle that in a spray and take home I would be in heaven. Aimee got a kick out of the birds “talking” to her. They were cute. They didn’t have as much fish as Jim remembered but the signs said a lot had gotten damaged during Hurricane Ike.

Then we went to the Dino Tent outside. All the dinosaurs moved and made noises and Aimee clung on to Jim’s neck in tears the whole way thru. James of course Loved all the dino stuff. He was a happy camper. See that smile? At the very end they had a dino with the skin off hooked up to a control box that the kids could play with to make him move and then Aimee relaxed and said they were toys.

We were going to try and catch the 4D movie before we went to watch the 3D but we missed the showing, so instead we had a quick lunch. Then we lined up to watch the IMAX 3D Dino Alive movie. It was an interesting 45 minute show. It didn’t hurt my eyes nearly as much as the Ice Age 3D movie. It was cold in there and Aimee took herself a power nap.

After that I decided since the boat ride was included in our day passes and I promised Jim I would work on my fear of boats and water…..we went for a ride on the Colonel Paddleboat. It was 2 stories and it moved slow enough it didn’t freak me out too bad. The kids loved it. Of course I had Jim take a picture to prove I was on the boat with it in water. lol. It was a 45 minute trip around the “lake” water thingy.

When we docked back we went to the Discovery Pyramid. They had an exhibit on Bones. It was a small exhibit, but the kids got to see different bones from different animals and humans. Aimee put together a bone puzzle and they had different x-rays you could look at. They also had a film ride in there but the decision was made to skip because neither Aimee nor I could go on it. James was not happy about that but oh well.

The next Pyramid might as well had been called Aimee’s Pyramid. It was the Aquarium. We saw penguins, seals, huge turtles, seahorses, starfish. James’ favorite was the sharks. We took almost 2 hrs walking around in there. It was a big family hit. Aimee was going nuts being in awe of everything. The stingray would swim up the glass and you could see their belly and Aimee and James would go nuts telling them Hi. Every starfish Aimee was yelling, “Patrick!”. She didn’t want to leave there. We are going to have to make a trip to a big Aquarium somewhere.

To finish off our day at MG, all we had was the 4D movie & the Gift Shop. We got there in time to catch a showing of the 4D movie. Personally I think it sucked. The previews were awesome, but the actual show looked like it was made for tv not 3D, nothing popped out. At least it was only 15 mins. When it ended you went into the gift shop so that worked out. The kids got a small trinket and we got Mom a 1000 piece frog puzzle. hehe.

Our original plan was to go to Moody Gardens and since we thought we would be done by 2-3 pm we would take the kids to the beach. Well we didn’t finish until about 6pm and by that time we were hungry and tired. As Jim and I were discussing  the beach, James immediately starting throwing a fit and crying like a 2 yr in the parking lot because all he heard was “no” and “beach”. Needless to say it was not the ending we were looking for on a family trip. So we just loaded them up and headed home.

Course we were hungry and by the time we hit Houston, from Galveston…James was STILL crying! So we made the parental decision that We wanted Joe’s Crab Shack and at that point we could have stopped at McDonald’s and James would still cry. So we got some yummy crab legs. It was my first time going on a Friday evening and man are they crazy! I snapped this footage of them dancing. After we ate we headed home and crawled into the drive away around midnight. Boy we were all tired and went straight to bed.