The hurricane that cried wolf (in San Antonio)

***I typed this post on Monday, Sept 15th as we were driving home from our vacation in San Antonio. I am finally, just now getting an opportunity to post it.

Here we sit, the four of us in the van, Matt listening to my Mp3, the kids in the back watching Evan Almighty on the TV/DVD and me, here, typing to you on my laptop. It’s amazing how technology has transformed our lives. Gone are the days where everyone would sleep, read or write during a road trip. Now we have more devices to play with than we have time or know-how. Last night when we set out for dinner at Dave & Busters, we didn’t have to do mapquest or look at the map, we just turned on my SIL’s GPS and ta-da we were being told through the voice of some unknown GPS woman where to go and when. Miraculously she knew precicely where we were at all times, even when we took the wrong exit, she automatically recalculated our directions—at which time I was using my cell phone to text message my BIL who was following us. How’d we ever live without all this stuff? What’s next? It just blows my mind to think how advanced technology has become just since I’ve been alive…and where it might be when my kids are adults….!!

Anyway, as most of you know, we’ve been on vacation for the past 5 days. Up until the moment we left, we were trying to decide if we should call the trip off. With all the hurricanes we’ve been having and hurricane Ike headed straight for Texas, we weren’t sure our plans of going to Sea World were very intelligent. It was already raining and the temperatures were dropping. We called Sea World on Wednesday night and they said they were tentatively scheduled to close on Saturday depending on what effects the hurricane had on them. It would be Saturday morning before they made the final decision. In the end, and after MUCH thought, we decided to just go ahead with the trip as planned and we would just make the best of it whatever happened.
S o….Thursday we drove 3 hours South to our hometown to meet up with our family. It rained the entire trip. We stayed the night at my MIL’s house and celebrated Matt’s Mamaw’s b-day. Then early Friday morning, we set off for San Antonio, TX despite the looming bad weather. Amazingly, the further South we drove, the nicer the weather got! By 4:30 pm when we arrived at Matt’s little sister’s house, the weather was picture perfect. In the low 90’s and bright sun-shiny! We all freshened up and then headed to the River Walk for dinner at The Rainforest Café. That is such a cool restaurant! The kids loved the thunderstorms every 30 minutes and all the life-like animals.
Saturday we all (11 of us) made our way to Sea World and had a great day. We were able to ride every ride except one and saw a few shows. That night we had our “Dinner with Shamu” experience which was very cool. We got to get VERY close to 4 killer whales and ask the trainers all of our questions while enjoying a huge buffet. Afterwards, my SIL Lindsay and I decided to get henna tattoo’s on our feet. They were so cute until the paste rubbed off and then we were left with very faint lines. We were disappointed since the girl said they would last 2 weeks….but still…it was pretty cool and not too horribly expensive ($12) When we got back to the hotel, the kids had a blast swimming in the hotel pool and hot tub while us adults sat and visited (and the guys played cards) on the patio.
Sunday we awoke to light rain but we didn’t let it damped our spirits. We threw on our ponchos and headed back to Sea World to catch a few more shows and rides and then finally around 2 pm, the sun came out and we went to the Lost Lagoon water park inside of Sea World. We had a ball going down the huge water slides and relaxing in the wave pool before the park closed and we went back to the hotel. We decided to go to Dave & Busters for dinner and maybe play a few games. By the time we got home last night from that, it was nearly midnight and we were all SO exhausted! Now, here we are, an hour and a half into our 9 hour drive home. The drive here wasn’t too horribly bad because the kids kept busy watching movie after movie (and playing with the items in their goody bags I made them) and I read the book Mistaken Identity aloud to Matt—all 275 pages! It was a great way to pass the time and I actually finished the last page as we were pulling into my SIL’s neighborhood!! (perfect timing!) It’s been a looooong time since I’ve gotten to read a book at all—but to actually finish one from cover to cover---I can’t even remember the last time! (probably on our cruise 3 ½ yrs ago!)
It was a fun trip but we definitely agree we wish we had planned an extra day into the trip to just relax. We stayed on-the-go the ENTIRE time and the only time we were able to just relax was when we fell into our beds at night. It sounds awful, I know..but I’m already looking forward to next weekend so we can just chill at home and relax. Ha!
*Thanks to my BIL, Larry, for thinking up the cool title for this post! :o) ---Although I feel I should mention that hurricane Ike did indeed cause a ton of destruction in TX—in Galveston and Houston—where almost everyone is out of power and gas…but for us in San Antonio…it missed us completely! Yay!