My Holiday: San Antonio

One thing I really like about having other people come to visit us is that it seems that it makes us more adventurous. We end up deciding to do things that we might not otherwise have thought to do on our own...or if we thought about it, we decided forget it, it's too much work with three small children. But then someone else shows up & suddenly the possiblities are endless. Case in point: we went cave hiking with Paula. The pros were that it's a super neat thing to do & Jeff & I have been dying to see one of these Texas caves for a long time. The cons: it's a very steep, wet, hour-long hike, we have 3 children under the age of 5, and Paula is claustrophobic. None of these things moved us. We went boldly where young children probably should not go, to the Natural Bridge Caverns.
It's a series of caves that has a trail running through it, and there are several hike "tours" that you can pay to go on. The one we went on was billed as the easiest one...it was about 45 minutes of hiking & went down to 180 feet below the surface at it's lowest point. So long story short, this is how we did it: Jeff carried Zoe in the carrier, I ended up carrying Dillon most of the way on my hip, and Noah walked, and was a trooper for pretty much the whole time. Paula pushed through too, even though she had to stop every 10 minutes or so with shortness of breath. I have a very good picture of her clinging to a railing for dear life that I intend to post. Did I mention that it was 80+ degrees down there, with 99% humidity? But what views!! It was amazing to see these caverns under the earth...you felt like you had fallen into a JRR Tolkein story at times. They named these huge caverns all sorts of fanciful names, like "The Hall of the Mountain King" or "The Valley of the Fallen Lords". I was just in awe of these incredible formations that take millions of years to form!! Of course, it's hard to get good pictures while you're balancing a 30 lb child on your hip, but I did my best.

On the way down to the caves

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. The entrance.

Everyone smile! This is fun! This is FUN! (Also, please note my highly appropriate hiking clothing.)

A tight squeeze. I have to admit, when I saw this passage, even I got a little claustrophobic.

Neat lookin rocks

Alien

Looks a little plastic, doesn't it?

A naturally occuring underground pool

Paula trying to smile through her pain

That's better

I didn't mention this, but this was a mini-break-trip to San Antonio that we did on the weekend before we were to leave for CA. We had intended to stop there on our way to CA, but decided that it would be more time efficient to go there the previous weekend & just drive home, since it's only 3 hours away from us.
The next stop was a wild animal park which is practically adjoining the cave site. There's all this acreage & they let all kinds of wildlife roam free over it, and you stay in your car & drive around, trying to feed the overstuffed animals from your hand, praying to God that the Texas Longhorn doesn't scratch your new car paintjob or the 7 foot tall ostrich with a bad attitude doesn't decide to peck your left eye out as dessert. I didn't feed any of the animals from my hand personally...too chicken. Jeff did, though, although he drew the line at the ostrich...who really did act as if he came from the Juvie Ostrich Hall pretty recently. It was a neat experience to see all these animals up close & personal, even if they were stupefied from being stuffed to the gills and sunstroke (it was about 100 degrees that day). We saw all kinds of deer, many varieties of moo cow, ostriches, giraffes (they kept those penned up, I guess they're too valuable to risk being roadkill), zebras, etc. Neat!

The wild animals

Moo

Daddy and Noah feeding the animals

Whatchoo lookin at?

Next we drove into San Antonio proper and checked into the AWESOME hotel that we had booked online. We got it for a very good price on one of these discount sites, and it was a Marriott...I have generally VERY good experiences with Marriott. Anyway, it was just beautiful, with a terrific pool and lovely landscaped areas, courtyard with fountain, etc. We left our bags & proceeded to take the kids down to the Riverwalk, which is the river that runs through the city with restaurants & bars and shops all along both sides of it. We took a little tourist boat on a "cruise" up & down the waterways, with the boatman giving us a running monologue of the history of the buildings & the river, etc. Interesting! Not so great was the waiting in line for a good HOUR before getting on the thing...note to self: maybe doing the Riverwalk on a Saturday night in July isn't the best thing in the world. The kids were pretty worn out after this big day, to say the least. I was too, truth be told. We slept well.
So the next day we went to the Alamo & Paula delighted in the history of it, looking at the displays, etc, to her hearts' content. (We had been there before). To be honest, although it's very interesting historically, I find these historical gravesites and battlefields kind of depressing...it's sad to read the gruesome histories of what went on, and how many people died, even if it's supposed to be "glorious". Anyway...we sweated it out there for awhile (what a hot summer!), and then made our way back to Waco. And that's our big weekend in San Antonio.

The beautiful fountain at our hotel

I waxed artsy with the photos of the beautiful hotel we stayed at:

Noah and Dillon (who's clearly had enough) at a Davy Crockett memorial pool at the Alamo

Ahh! Some sugary sweetness after a long hot morning

Always look for the silver lining: a cloud that was beautiful at the end of our day.

My Holiday:

I remember reading a Peter and Jane book once that was about Peter going back to school and writing an essay entitled something like "My Holiday", wherein he encapsulated his summer at the seashore or some equally British. We Americans go on vacation & go to the beach. Also, have you noticed that in the similarly titled series, "Dick and Jane", that the writers in both instances have used the names "Peter" and "Dick", which are both nicknames for male genetalia?

Why am I on this subject?

I digress. I'm trying to write a little travelogue of our...well...travels, to California. Jeff and I had planned to drive there for awhile, as we had not been able to afford to do so for quite some time. Yay for pay raises! In our family we have this "special day highwater season" which starts with Noah's birthday on July 23rd and ends with Jeff's birthday on Sept. 1st. Included are mine, Zoe and Paula's birthdays, and our anniversary. Cha Ching! All this to say we often try to go on vacation around this time...makes it all more festive.
This year was a particularly big year for Paula, being her 60th birthday. So Jeff and I decided to fly her out here, because seeing us and helping me to take care of our kids for a week or two is SUCH a special present, and then we all were going to drive back to CA together. Which is what we did. I had a very nice visit with Paula (Jeff was still working, this was about 2 weeks prior to driving to CA), and she caught up on her Grandmother time with the kids. We had Noah's birthday celebration during this time, too. Guess where we went? And they all said: CHUCK E CHEESE! Of course. He turned 5, but for deep dark reasons still INSISTS that he's 4, because per him, if you're 5 you have to go to school. No matter that he already IS in school and enjoying it...I guess it's the idea of the thing that he objects to. It's something we're working on. Anyway, here's some pics of the birthday:

The birthday cake Noah had his heart set on. Look at it closely...it's quite a cake. Bonus points because the toys on it are all actual toys and are being used by both boys! Do you know how much Spiderman toys cost? About as much as this cake. Score.

Noah wanted the Chuck E Cheese crown more than anything in the world, and here he is proudly wearing it.

Yee haw pardner. He struck this pose ENTIRELY ON HIS OWN and held it while we took pictures. The outfit was a present.

Happy Birthday Boy

Miss Zoe with Dilly's consolation prize cars. Grandma Paula got Dilly a present too, so he wouldn't feel left out.

The pièce de résistance: a big boy bike!

I was going to write more and publish more pictures, but unfortunately I am out of time today. More tomorrow, children permitting.

Update

So Kia fixed our DVD player, just in time for our marathon drive to and from California. Yay! I'll tell you, now that it works, that thing is worth it's weight in GOLD. Even the baby will watch it & it helps a little with entertaining her, which is priceless.
We literally did something, an outing, etc, every day that we were in California, which means that we burned the candle at both ends and ended up sick at the end of the trip...but it was worth it. Had really fun times and made really good memories.
When I can get the pics uploaded to the computer I will post a travelogue.

And now I must continue with the myriad preparations for handing my beloved first born son over to strangers to keep for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week....a process otherwise known as getting ready for school. I find it so disconcerting to think that for the first 5 years of his life he was mine, but now everything in those 7 hours he's away I will have no control over. I have no say in the cirriculum or the rules that he will have to abide by...I don't even know what really goes on in a kindergarten class, because I never attended traditional school myself.

Are we freaking out, preciousss? Yesss. We Is.