Beach Trip Part 1

For months now, if you ask Abbey what she wants to do during summer vacation she has said "Go to the beach!" Now, as I may have mentioned before on this blog, I hate sand, which the beach is unfortunately covered in. But I love my daughter, and making memories, so we finally went to the beach. I say "finally" because we have been trying to make this trip for over two months! In May we planned to go, and something came up with Chad's job. In June we were all ready to go but realized it was going to rain a lot that weekend. Thankfully we had not told the girls about our plans either time. Finally there was a three day window where Chad was free, so off we went. I'll post all our beach pictures in another post, and this post will be sand-free. 


We were able to stay in the Navy Lodge, which is a great perk of being a military family. Although it's nothing fancy, it is always clean, quiet, safe and half the price of other hotels! The girls thought the table and chairs were just perfect for the four of us to sit and play a new card game called Wig Out! It was a lot of fun, hopefully we did not disturb our neighbors with our wigging out. They also enjoyed watching lots of Disney channel, which we don't have at home. Ah, vacation. 

Ready to enjoy dinner in the room- Abbey was sunburned and did not feel like going out to eat.

Reading a bedtime story on the Kindle

Snuggled up, ready for bed- at least the second night they were. The first night they both threw a fit because they didn't want to sleep together.

Playing on the small playground outside the Lodge

Our first night in town we picked up a brochure for the local botanical gardens. It looked like it was on our way out of town, was inexpensive and had some interesting exhibits like a butterfly house, so when we checked out of the hotel we went there. It was pretty much a bust. All of the exhibits were very small and disappointing. It was extremely hot, which you have to expect in south Texas in July, but I thought there would be more indoor (greenhouse) parts and more shade. The highlight of the whole thing were these small, decorated flamingo statues throughout the garden. Some of them were decorated with a theme and others were just haphazardly dressed up. I thought they were kind of sad but the girls enjoyed spotting them and reading their names. 

Elliott and Abbey with Winnie the Flamingo and all his friends.

One of two butterflies we saw... at least the other one was alive.

Saluting with Daddy and the military flamingos

Although the garden didn't turn out like we hoped, we can say we did it, and that we tried something new on our trip. We definitely enjoyed staying at the Navy Lodge and it's nice that staying in a hotel isn't as stressful now that the girls are a little older. And don't worry, beach pictures coming soon!