Our First Family Vacation

I have this dream of our family being beautifully close.  I want us to love spending time with one another.  I want us to go on family vacations, whether big or small, and make sweet memories that we will cherish always.  I know the girls are still so young that they won't even remember this as they get older, but we will.  We'll have photos to show them later on as we share with them the wonderful things we did together on our first family vacation.  Do I live in some sort of fairytale land where I think my children will one day care about these things?  Am I crazy to think they will want old pictures and videos of themselves when they were a mere 8 months old?  Maybe so.  But I refuse to let that stop me!  Because even if they don't care, I do.  And I will value this time always.

For the 4th of July holiday, we decided to head on down to Corpus Christie for a few days.  Our original plan was to take them to the Texas State Aquarium on the 4th (that Wednesday that we drove down).  However, you know how plans go sometimes....

One of the reasons we wanted to do this is because they had an area at the aquarium where you could easily see the big fireworks show that the town puts on.  Well, apparently you have to be a member in order to get in to watch this and they were already sold out.  Scratch that idea!  So, we decided to take them to a minor league baseball game (The Corpus Christie Hooks).  But before we did, we went to the hotel to relax for a little bit....and play :)

They typically have a big display of fireworks that they shoot off every game. But since it was the 4th of July, they just let the crowd enjoy the main show in town which you could very easily see from the field as well.  We went to the game and soon realized the tickets that the guy sold us were for another day. We were already well into the stands and it was too late at this point.  We had.no.seats.  We decided that we would just sit in the grassy area and watch the game from there.  Great in theory.  Not so great in reality.  Everyone else and their brother had this idea and it was a little difficult to see from the spot we ended up occupying.  We at least got some pretty pictures out of it :)

We decided to head back up into the stands and see if we could find a place to sit.  Maybe someone would be absent from their seats and we could take advantage?!  Maybe someone would take pity on us and let this momma and daddy with twins sit for a bit?  Yep, someone did and although it didn't last long because the proud owners of these seats soon showed up, we were able to rest our feet and watch a little of the game...and of course entertain the many questions we got about our girls from the people that surrounded us.  We're used to it.

If you noticed that there are no pictures of fireworks, you noticed right.  The girls started getting a little fussy, but who could blame them?!  We had been on the road all day, it was hot, and it was nearing their bedtime.  We decided it would just be best if we grabbed some dinner and headed back to the hotel. And since this was their very first stay in a hotel, we had to take...pictures!  As you can see, we brought both of their pack n plays for them to sleep in.  We downloaded a white noise app on the iPad and used this for their sound machine.  This worked well and they slept great....well, at least the first night anyways ;)

On Thursday, we took the girls to the beach!  Thanks to Kristin (our sister-in-law) who lived in this area for a little while, we were able to find a pretty nice, less populated area to hang out.  Although we were limited on the amount of time we could stay (hey, they're still babies and they get tired!), we had a blast and I definitely think the girls will want to go back one day!  The girls found the dirt quite tasty (yum!) and really seemed to enjoy splashing in the water.

 

And what better way to top off a day at the beach than with our very first, big girl bath!  Unfortunately, we didn't have any bath toys for them to play with but they didn't seem to mind too much.  I just love that I can post these pictures without worrying about their "areas" showing...their little chunky bellies take care of hiding that for me :)

On Friday, we ended our vacation with a trip to the Texas State Aquarium!  We didn't anticipate it being so crowded...James and I definitely learned a few lessons along the way.  Like, we should bring the tandem stroller to a busy, indoor activity like this.  Not only was the jogging stroller difficult to maneuver around people, it also didn't fit through all of the doors.  Ya know, like the ones that have a column going down the center of it.  So yes, we were the people you saw removing their children from the stroller so that they could fold it up and carry it through the door.  Nice.  Despite all of this, we still had a great time :)

We had such a wonderful time and I am so thankful for the amazing family I have to make these beautiful memories with!  Just looking at these pictures makes me ready for another trip.  I feel so incredibly blessed.

I think there's no better way to end this post than with a few more pictures of these two cuties taking a bath!  When we got home, we ALL were a little gross from our days events so we had to clean the girls up before bedtime.  This time, we have toys to help entertain :)