Trip to Galveston

Andy and I really didn't take a "vacation" this summer.  We usually take a big trip with just each other and then a camping trip with Andy's parents.  Honestly, we thought neither would happen due to us completely moving our life to Katy.  We decided we would take a short trip to Galveston last week for some alone time away from reality before school gets going in full swing.  Andy's parents watched Maddie and Lonestar for us while we were away, and even volunteered to keep them another night so we could spend an extra day and night in Galveston.  It was a very relaxing and much needed trip after the craziness of moving.

We are convenient store junkies when we travel.  It
never fails we stop somewhere to get a drink, candy,
and some chips usually.

Fred Hartman Bridge on the way to Galveston

Welcome to Galveston!

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and headed to the hotel to check in.  We decided to go to the pool for a little while before dinner.  We ate at Fish Tales, which normally has delicious seafood.  This time around we a some problems with our meal.  Typically we order salads with our meal and request that they come before the actual meal.  A young girl delivered our food before the salads, and I told her that I was not ready for my meal because our salads hadn't come yet.  Now Fish Tales has a open kitchen area so we can see when the cooks put the food out for the servers to pick up.  Andy watched her walk over to the salad area and pick up our two salads to bring back to us.  We are assuming that they had been sitting there for a while.  The girl left with our meal and put it under a heat lamp.  Andy called our waiter over and told him what had happened and that our food was sitting under a heat lamp.  Andy asked him to have our food re-cooked.  I mean, who wants seafood that's been sitting under a heat lamp!?!  Yuck.  This is when it gets really good... Andy watched our waiter speak to the cook about our food, he watched the cook make the motion like he was going to throw our food into the garbage, and then he watched the cook put our food back under the heat lamp!  He even looked at our table as Andy was watching him.  Seriously!?!  After that, we spoke to a manager and she comped our food which I find highly embarrassing.  I hate causing a big scene and I hate people giving us things for free.  But, our request was not abnormal.  I would understand if had been eating at Chili's where our meal would cost 20ish dollars.  This was a seafood restaurant where our bill was going to be over $50 for just two people, and the behavior of the cook was wrong.  Unfortunately, I really like Fish Tales, but I don't know if we'll be eating there again.

At Fish Tales
Andy always makes fun of me because
I always take self-portraits of us. Oh well. :)

After dinner we went to the local putt-putt golf course.  Andy usually kicks my butt, but I did have a 4-stroke lead over him at one point.  Then I choked and he ended up beating me by 2 strokes.  It was really crowded, but we definitely had a good time.

Thursday we spent the whole day in the car.  Well pretty much the whole day.  We woke up early and went to the fitness center.  Then we headed over to Bolivar Peninsula because I had never been.  That's the part of Galveston that was mostly under water from Hurricane Ike.  It amazes me how quickly coastal towns bounce back from natural disasters.  We had to ride the ferry to get to the peninsula, so that was pretty cool.

The wind was a little crazy on the ferry!

We ate lunch at Stingaree's seafood restaurant.  This was the meal we were looking for at Fish Tales the night before.  We shared a seafood platter of fried crab, stuffed crab, shrimp, crawfish, stuffed shrimp, fish, and shrimp etouffee.  It was very yummy.  I was not a fan of the stuffed crab and stuffed shrimp, but everything else was really good.

After lunch, we drove around on Crystal Beach and headed back to the main island.  Then Andy drove me down to the San Luis Pass and showed me all of his fishing spots when he takes his kayak out.  We saw some large (and really I mean massive) beach houses!  Of course we talked about what it would be like if we could afford a beach house.  I told him that I would never want to live in a coastal town but a beach house is not a bad idea.

All of the driving around made us pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel to hang out at the pool again.  The hotel bar was having happy hour so we had a few drinks.  Then we had a quiet dinner at Chili's.  We also decided to go to the movies.  I can't tell you the last time I went to the movies, maybe a year or maybe two years.  We went to see Grown Ups 2.  I was disappointed.  There was no plot or goal for the movie to get to.  Were there funny moments?  Absolutely, there were several.  But overall, I would have rather saved that for the $1 rental from RedBox.

When we left Chili's this was the Salt Grass sign...
Or should I say "Sal Ass."  It stayed like that for the
next night as well.

Friday we headed to The Strand to browse all of the shops.  We stopped at this super cute old-fashioned themed ice cream shop.  It was so adorable.  All of the workers dressed the part of the ice cream shop workers from the 1950s.  I wanted to spend some time actually laying out at the pool to get some sun, so we headed back to the hotel mid-afternoon.  After the pool, we rented a bicycle to ride on the Seawall.  Ha.  We had to ride into the wind going down the Seawall, and that was probably one of the most difficult bike rides ever.  The wind was brutal.  It was much better coming back when the wind was blowing with us.

Saw this at one of the shops on The Strand.
Cracked me up!!  I know, I know...
you're thinking "math nerd."

Hanging out at the pool

Our bicycle!

This night was going to be our night out on the town since several places had live music on Friday night.  We went to this restaurant called The Spot.  Well, it's not just a restaurant... It's one restaurant and about four bars all crammed into the same building.  It's crazy!  The whole building is about three stories tall and there are so many little nooks and crannies throughout.  You order your food at the counter and then find a seat.  Your food is ready when the buzzer goes off and you walk back to the counter to pick it up.  Trying to find a seat was ridiculous.  Remember, there are three stories.  You don't have a waitress or hostess to find the next available seat for you.  You are on your own.  This kind of stuff really stresses me out because it's just mad chaos.  Thankfully Andy found us a table.  I mean, there were groups/families of 15+ people trying to find tables, and the entire group would walk around which just made it more chaotic.  Despite all the madness, the burgers and fries were delicious.  I would eat there again, but maybe like middle of the afternoon since it might be less crowded then.

After dinner, we headed to one of the bars located in the same building.  We had to wait for a little bit to find an open table.  We were there about an hour before the live music started.  It really started to get crowded, like abnormally crowded.  And we were the youngest people by like 15 years.  Ha.  Little did we know, there was a class reunion from 1983 happening at that exact same bar.  That explained why I felt so young.  I thought it was hilarious to watch all these "old" people.  Oh yeah, I did have a frozen strawberry mojito.  It was probably the most interesting tasting drink I've ever had.  Not sure if I would get another one.

At the bar with the 1983 class reunion!

Saturday we headed back to Tarkington to pick up our animals and have dinner with Andy's parents.  Overall, it was a great trip and some good quality time before the craziness of work starts back up.

This will sound so conceited, but I really don't mean it that way...
I think I love taking selfies of us because we're just too darn cute!

Sea World!!

On Tuesday Andy and I drove to San Antonio to visit Andy's best friend from college, Brittany.  Unfortunately, it took us a little longer than we had expected to get there thanks to traffic.  It really surprised me how many people were on I-10 at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, but I guess that's the world we live in.  Once we got to her apartment, we hung out for a little while letting Maddie play outside with Haley (Brittany's dog).  We ate at El Chaparral a Mexican food restaurant in Helotes which is near Brittany's apartment.  It was quite delicious!  Then we went back to the apartment and just hung out talking until midnight.

Typical car shot of us on our way to SA!

Brittany is in senior management at Sea World, and she works on the education side.  She's what I would consider a "big dog" at Sea World.  We would have gotten into Sea World for free since we are both teachers, but Brittany also gets free passes for her guests.  We went to every show except for the Elmo and Seasame Street shows.  We did not get on any rides or go to Aquatica the waterpark.  Neither one of us had been to Sea World since the mid-90s and a lot has changed since then.  Most of the shows were still pretty typical for Sea World, but we had so much fun.

Since we had a connection with an employee at Sea World, we got to do some behind the scenes things.  Brittany met up with us first thing when the park opened and showed us the coral reefs and shark tanks from above like where the divers would actually get in.  It was so cool!  The Tiger Sharks were so large from this viewpoint.  I mean, they look huge when you actually look at them inside the aquarium facility, but they look even larger at the surface of the water.

After lunch, Brittany met up with us again and watched the Shamu show.  Then she took us behind the scenes to several holding tanks that they have for the marine life who aren't in the shows.  We got to see a baby dolphin!  So cute!  I couldn't get a picture of it though; it moved too quickly for me.  Then we got to touch a shark - eek!!  Actually, it was a small shark called a White Spotted Bamboo Shark.  I didn't take a picture, but here is one I found on the Internet.

Then we fed... yes fed like fed them food... sting rays.  This was by far my favorite thing of the day!  Brittany gave us shrimp and we had to hold it between our pointer finger and middle finger so that it was just barely stuck.  The sting ray would then cover your hand and suck up the food with its mouth.  This was really cool!  Seriously!  After Andy and I fed them we just touched them in the water.  They have no bones in their bodies so they are made up entirely of cartilage. All of the barbs on their stingers had been removed, but it was still a little freaky.  Andy actually touched the stinger, and he said it actual felt flimsy even though they look rock hard as they are swimming.

We got to the park around 10:30am and didn't leave until after 8:30pm.  We had such a great time!  It was just like being a little kid all over again.  I told Andy that we will definitely have to take our kids one day to Sea World.

I have a TON of pictures, but I will try to post only the best ones on here, so bare with me!  No, seriously... I had 200 pictures and I think I got it under 30.  Not sure if I'll post all of them.  LOL

Brittany, Andy, and I waiting on the Shamu show

The first show we went to was the water ski show.  It really fascinates me what people can do on the water behind a boat.  This show was similar to what I remember as a child.

We went to the sea lion and otter show.  We actually saw them twice.  The first show was their normal show and the evening show was a spoof of all the other shows at Sea World.  Both shows were funny!

Brittany told us that this is a female walrus and the
male walrus they have is much much larger.

I don't remember if this one was Clyde or Seamore...

Another show we saw was the Beluga and Pacific White-sided Dolphins.  This show was probably the most disappointing show because there were divers who did a lot stunts.  Don't get me wrong, the stunts were really cool and they did some diving from pretty high up, but I wanted to see more of the animals.

And of course, we saw Shamu!  Just like the sea lions, we saw this show twice.  One was the typical afternoon show and then we saw the evening show which was Shamu Rocks.  The evening show was more entertaining because the whales did a lot more jumps.  These creatures are so massive that they are fascinating to watch.  Plus, Brittany gave us a lot of statistics about them so it made them even more fun to watch.  The whale with the bent top fin is the biggest whale at Sea World San Antonio.  His father actually weighs 12,000 pounds, so they are expecting him to be even bigger!

It's amazing how they can get their entire body out
of the water and flip in the air.  They are moving at great speeds under the water to do this!

The Shamu show would not be complete if he didn't
splash you.  That's A LOT of water!!
We stayed out of the splash (drench) zone.

Texas Land Cut

I really should be doing things like unpacking boxes and organizing all of our stuff, but... I enjoy blogging and don't like to fall behind.  So, I will put off the unpacking and organizing for now.  :)

Last weekend Andy went to Texas Land Cut for a fishing trip.  I don't know a lot about the place except that once in Padre you have to travel by boat to get to the cabin, there's good fishing, and the trip was free for Andy.  The cabin that Andy stayed in used to be a camp house for troubled boys.  It was a place this gentleman took teenage boys to help redirect them to a better path of life and to help them make better choices about their life.  This particular cabin actually has it's own natural spring/aquifer so the fresh water for cooking and bathing does not have to be shipped in from somewhere else.  There is electricity but cell phone reception is spotty.  I am sure Andy will read this and probably have to correct me because I can't remember every little detail he told me about this camphouse.

Pier and camphouse

Andy went with our realtor Curtis (he helped us find our house here in Katy) and another mutual friend of theirs.  They left on Friday afternoon and came back late Sunday evening.  They fished whenever they could, early morning, morning, night, afternoon.  You name it, they were fishing.  Andy said there were quite a few fellow Aggies on the trip!  Whoop!

Andy's friends... Curtis and Nathan

Andy actually caught a total of six fish, all speckled trout, but all of the fish caught were put into a group collection and then divided evenly among everyone on the trip.  On Sunday they could wait around extra for someone to fillet the fish and divvy it up.  However, Andy and his friends were ready to head back home so they didn't wait on any fish.  I was a little bummed because I was really hoping he would have brought enough fish home for a fish fry.

Night fishing

Curtis decided to take a nap... on the boat!  LOL

Nathan threw is fish on the dock and this is
how it landed.  Too funny to not share!

Credit Card Woes

Since we've been married, we have used a Bank of America MasterCard.  They are extremely overprotective about fraud and making sure that we are the ones using our card and making the purchases.  However, instead of using technology (like text messages, a phone call, or email) to contact us when a "weird" or fraudulent purchase is being made, they just decline the card.  This has happened to us several times, and it's quite embarrassing.  Especially when we put thousands of dollars on our card each month and pay it off completely each month.  I understand the protection and am thankful for it.  But it's a bit much when the actual owner of the card can't even use the card.  If we make a purchase outside of our usual purchasing area, they shut the card down.  Andy changed our address on the cards before we moved to Katy, but it still didn't help.  They shut our card down after we made the large purchase for our flooring.  We never received any notification that they were going to shut it down until it was declined that same evening when I was purchasing our new gas grill.  Long story short, they have issued us 3 new credit card numbers in the last week because of all of this safety protection. 

We are finally fed up and are switching banks/cards.  We are going to a Capital One Visa because they offer 1.5% cash back as opposed to the 1% cash back that other cards offer.  I really wanted a Chase MasterCard since we now bank with Chase and they actually use the new technology available for banking.  But I didn't win.  Honestly, I don't really care.  Andy does the finances for our family, and he did the research and decided this was the best card for us.

Apparently, you can personalize your credit card and this is how Andy designed my card.  So cute!

Reunion and Other Things

This past weekend I had my ten-year class reunion.  It was nice!  We had about 15 people show up out of the 33 we graduated with.  I guess that's a good turn out, but I don't know.  It really surprised me who did not show up, but oh well their loss.  I thought it was interesting that the same cliques from high school still hung out together, but at the same time it makes sense.

We had the reunion at the Green Dickson Park in Shiner.  Thankfully the weather was cooler since we had it at one of the outdoor pavilions.  We asked people to bring snack food to munch on and the class officers bought a cake for everyone.  I ordered the cake from Brookshire Brothers in Hallettsville and it was very delicious!  However, the lady that took my order over the phone must not have fully understood what I wanted written on the cake despite repeating the wording back to me correctly.

Do you notice the problem?

Yep, apparently we graduated in 2013 and were already celebrating our ten-year reunion!  I did the best I could to fix it....

Here are some pics of us prior to the reunion.

You know I love selfies!

I really love my puppy dog.  She has such a personality.  I took these pics one morning because she was being so sweet.

And then I get the cheesy smile!  So sweet!