A Sunday Adventure: Father's Day in Galveston

We love a good adventure, so on Sunday, we headed down to Galveston for Father's Day! We started at the Aquarium at Moody Gardens. The kids get in free with their good grades, which is always nice. 

The aquarium has a lot of sea turtles, which is perfect for our sea-turtle-obsessed boy. If you look closely under the rock, you can see Chloe, a Kemp's Ridley with paralyzed back legs that make her unrealeasable into the wild.  

The aquarium had a small stand dedicated to helping sea turtles. The boys got to hold a Kemp's Ridley turtle shell. We know a lot about turtles due to Henry's fascination with them, but we did learn some new information: if you see plastic bottles on the beach with diamond shapes cut out of them, those are turtles' bite marks. Turtles often mistake plastic bags and plastic bottles for food, so it is really important to make sure trash is put in the trash or recycling bins!

More turtles for Henry.

We also saw more jawfish, like we saw in San Diego.

After lunch at Moody Gardens, we headed to Galveston Island State Park to go to the beach. It's not as pretty as San Diego, but the boys enjoyed the warm water and learning how to body surf. 

Sand sculpting again -- this time, a crab!

We did our best to pick up trash on the beach. We found an oil bottle with a diamond-shaped turtle bite out of it and threw it right out.  

We had a great time at the beach until a crab pinched Gene's foot and then a few minutes later, Henry cut his foot on a shell! We decided to rinse off, bandage Henry's foot and head back to town for the rest of the afternoon. 

I really wanted to visit the new Bryan Museum that just opened but they are currently only offering hour-long docent-led tours, and that's never the best choice for our family. We'll have to go back in the future when we can explore on our own.

Instead, we headed to the Galveston Railroad Museum.

We'd never been before, so it was fun to explore.

And then we headed to the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig Museum. We'd been before, but it was worth a second visit.

Goofy Henry looks like he's falling asleep on the job!

Dad and his boys on Father's Day

By the time we finished our museum visits, it was dinnertime. We ate at Fisherman's Wharf, like we always do when we're in Galveston. There's nothing better than fresh seafood and local beer (we tried Galveston Brewing Company's Tiki Wheat) with a view of the Elissa and the water.  

We ended the day with ice cream at La King's Confectionery: chocolate chip cookie dough for Will and mint chocolate chip for Henry, with licks of both for Mom. We watched the taffy being pulled and came home with a bag of treats to enjoy this week.

Our day in Galveston was full and busy and fun and just the perfect way to spend Father's Day together.

Father's Day

We had a busy, fun-filled Father's Day weekend! We spent Sunday in Galveston so we decided to give Gene his Father's Day gifts a day early. 

We found a really cool pop-up camping card at Barnes and Noble to go along with the "Keep Calm and Camp On" t-shirt. The boys and I also found some Stone Brewing Company beer (a San Diego brewery) and Guinness potato chips at Central Market last week. 

All Gene really wanted to do was barbeque a pork shoulder on the grill. He ended up having some Cub Scout work to attend to and made homemade buns for the pulled pork sandwiches, but he did spend a lot of the day outside with his grill. 

Will really enjoys helping me in the kitchen these days, so he cut up all the potatoes for dinner.  

Grilling and chilling with his boys out back. This was Gene's favorite part of the day!

Happy Father's Day to our bread-baking, grill-loving, adventurous dad and all the other fathers out there!

Summer Break: Week Three

Our third week of summer break was quiet and a bit rainy. Tropical Storm Bill sauntered ashore Tuesday and had little impact in Houston, except to scare everyone into thinking it would be a repeat of the horrible Memorial Day floods. Our Tuesday swim and art classes were canceled and we had a quiet day inside.

Here's a quick look at what we did this week:

Last Sunday, our church celebrated the Sacrament of Matrimony with cake, mimosas, and whole spread of food. It happened to fall on my parents' wedding anniversary, which made it extra special!

Before the rain: we headed to Barnes and Noble with our finished reading logs.  

Grilling and chilling on Tuesday (the day Tropical Storm Bill came ashore).

Lots and lots of free play: building cool marble runs with our Q Ba Maze.

A little yoga in the morning.

We had a busy Thursday, running errands and heading to two libraries. Gene was traveling, so the boys and I treated ourselves to dinner at the new Barnaby's in the Museum District! They give the kids Cubebots to play with while they wait for their food. We are in the Museum District A LOT and are thrilled to have another dining option.

Despite visiting the Looscan Library on Thursday morning, we had to go to the Montrose Library after dinner to get more books. Will's latest obsession is Goosebumps.

I finally ordered our Tastebook! I have been compiling our favorite recipes for five years on the Tastebook website and finally took the time to edit/review the first 100 recipes and have them printed. Our Tastebook arrived on Thursday night. I think the boys were just as excited as I was to have the book in print!

Summer is flying by!

Summer Break: Week Two

Summer is our favorite time of year! The busy-ness of the school year, with the long school days, homework and after-school activities give way to lazy summer days, sleeping in and getting to do whatever we want.

With our California vacation taking up the first week of summer, I am documenting summer 2015 beginning with week two. We try to get out of the house every day for some activity but we enjoy plenty of downtime to read, play and create elaborate imaginary worlds too!

Sunday: Henry and I explored the new East End farmers market right after our trip to California. It's a small market but we came away with bags of fresh veggies to add to every meal. We're enjoying digging through our recipes to find old favorites as well as new ones, like this caprese mac and cheese.

Henry loves playing football with Gene in the backyard. After Sunday's playtime, Henry wrote Gene the sweetest note about their time together.  

Monday: We visited the library and picked up our annual pool pass at the rec center and were at the pool as soon as they opened. It was our first visit of the season. The boys are such good swimmers now!

We also started a couple of science experiments. Can you see the stalactite/stalagmite? We created this out of baking soda, water and string!

Tuesday:  We went to a Super Science Summer members event at the Health Museum. The boys decorated flower pots and planted dill seeds. We also explored the new Eat Well, Play Well exhibit.  

We finished our morning with a picnic lunch at Gramma and Grampa's and the boys played happily with my childhood toys.

Wednesday: We love summer dollar movies. This week we watched Nut Job.

Thursday: We spent the whole day at home but had a fun evening outing planned. It was the annual Water Squirt Melee for Cub Scouts. It was good to catch up with our Scout friends after not seeing them for an entire month!

Friday: We headed to two museums on Friday. First up, the science museum, where we searched the paleontology wing for prehistoric sea turtles. We found quite a few fossils!

After two hours at the museum, we decided to visit the MFAH for lunch and to check out the new exhibits. We stumbled upon Gyula Kosice's The Hydrospatial City, which is an amazing room-sized exhibit of a floating utopia. It reminded me of Tomorrowland and the boys and I were wowed. We walked between the floating structures, examining them and searching for little people inside. I didn't snap any pictures, but this is one exhibit that we'll revisit again and again this summer. It has already sparked many drawings and new games for the boys. A must-see exhibit, especially for kids!

We then visited Shadow Monsters, a new installation by artist Philip Worthington. It's a participatory exhibit that uses technology to transform your shadows. The boys had so much fun with this exhibit!

Saturday: Here are a few pictures from another one of our experiments. We soaked one egg in vinegar all week and another in water. After five days, the shell had dissolved from the vinegar egg and all that was left was the egg's inner membrane. When you drop the egg, it bounces just like a ball.

My favorite boys!

The summer months are a needed break from the routines of the school year and so far, our summer is shaping up to be a fantastic one!

California 2015: The Last Day

Our flight out of San Diego didn't leave until late afternoon, so we took full advantage of a beautiful Saturday morning to head to the beach. The boys wanted to go to the same beach on Coronado Island that we'd visited the two previous days, but we decided to change it up and drive an extra 10 minutes to Silver Strand State Beach. We arrived at 8 am and pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves. It was glorious!

We found all kinds of shells and the boys would dash into the water to rinse them off.

 

Will, especially, loves the ocean. Can you see the pure joy on his face?

We made sand castles,

sometimes even right where the tide comes rushing in.

And it turns out Gene is a pretty talented sand artist!

 

What a wonderful way to spend our final morning in San Diego!

We enjoyed lunch at the Regal Beagle, an eatery that specializes in brats and (local) beer! It was an awesome combination and the bonus was that it was two minutes from our rental car return location.

We had to try the Silva Stout by Green Flash Brewing Company.

And here's one final shot from the Lego shop at the San Diego airport: ocean waves made out of Legos!

We had a wonderful time on our vacation and look forward to future trips to California. What a wonderful way to start our summer!