peanut butter and rambly: July 2009

Housekeeping! I miss you lady, I really really do. That stinking hotel bed kicked my bed's boot too. I am NOT glad to be home. Sure after the four or so hour ride home (all salty and sandy and whatnot) I was fanfunnyhappy to be here and get a shower (two actually). But blahbitty blippitty bloo. Wanna hear all about our sweet lil' vacay? Alright then, if you insist.

The first day we went to Houston, found our hotel, found Joey's place (via a roundabout twirlaround thanks to a cuckoo crazy gps), and headed over to the Nasa Space Center.
Ok yeah, total bust that one. I really can't quite wrap my wee brain around why it was so lame there because Adam and I took the big boys three or so years ago and it was great. It was likely because of the ridiculously massive crowd. Sheesh.

It should have been really super neato. They are having a whole big George Lucas exhibit and the big boys were signed up for light saber training. We went straight to the end of the line that I Just Work Here But I Have No Idea What's Going On directed me to. After awhile in the line someone noticed most of the people already had their (FREE - the only good point) light sabers so I went off to pick up a couple for the boys. The light sabers were kinda alright, inflatible is all but they did light up. By the time I got back to the line though it was brought to my attention that yeah we weren't even in the right line. After talking to Clueless number two and three I found the line going off to the rest of the light saber training (we had already missed the movie and parade part) outside. The boys wouldn't go far enough up front to see the instructor (the guy in the brown robe, I'm not big on Star Wars, don't know his name) so basically we watched them dismiss Darth Vader and went back inside.

Josey - Master Rememberer had reminded Adam in the parking lot that the last time we were there he promised him that we could do the "train". So we go over there and find out it's like an hour wait so I insist that if we're waiting in a line for an hour long ride we better go feed the crew first. So after we round up enough chairs and a table (no small feat) Adam goes off and gets some insanely overpriced food which all three boys procceed to eat none of. Well, I tried.

The train was still threatening an hour long wait so instead we go over to the I guess they were calling it the hands on exhibit. There's some mirrors that show you what you'd look like on different planets (wider, taller, shorter, whatnot), two rovers, a thing where you pump it to set off a lil rocket, just lil things of that nature.

Now the highlight of all this last time was a big ole slide that you have to go up in an elevator to get to then slide on back down to the bottom floor and on and on and on. That was definitely still the highlight for Ben but poor Josey wouldn't have anything to do with it because his tummy hurt.

For those of you not in the know, Josey has a plethora of stomach issues. He's got Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome, which is a fancy way of saying a really nervous stomach occassionally (or often for some people) to the point of vomiting. Then he's got the ole Splenic Flexure Syndrome which is where his colon instead of doing an upside down u-shape like everyone else's veers off before going back down. That causes his stomach to not empty quite properly. He went to the stomach doctor (Gastrespelledwrongologist) and is on medicine for it so mostly his stomach just gets upset when he's hungry, nervous, or excited but usually is settled right back down when he eats or takes his other (not as strong but minus the drowsiness) stomach medicine.

But aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyways, after awhiles Josey started feeling better and played with all but the slide. They played for awhile and then we got in the super thinned out line for the tram tour.
Lame lame lamitty lame lame. The few highlights were the lady telling about everthings ridiculous spiel which included her saying "Just kidding" a zillion times, bunches of old bikes just lying around everywhere (including one in the middle of a parking lot) and Jake thinking he was running the whole train by pushing on a star.

They owe me an hour of my life back. But you knew there was a reason I went into all Josey's stomach issues right? Yeah he totally had to lean over the side and show off his Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. Shortly after that the ride was done (thank goodness) and we hightailed it out of that place. I strongly don't reccommend it.

Afterwards back to the hotel, the part of the whole trip oddly enough that Ben was looking forward to more then anything. He was not disappointed - pullout couch, pool, free breakfast. Then just when he thought it couldn't get any better we got pizza delivered right to our door (with his usal pepperoni/no cheese Pizza Mia all to himself just like at home).

The next day everyone but Adam went down for some breakfast. The breakfast really was nothing much to write home about but I have to (per Josey) mention the waffles. They had this lil waffle machine where you got a cup of batter and made your own Texas shaped waffles. They made for a very amusing breakfast, but unfortunately a lot of ya'll are now homeless because we ate your houses, yeap. After breakfast we went swimming in the hotel pool.

Then we were off to the Houston Children's Museum (www.cmhouston.org). Awwwesome! I wish we could've spent a whole day there. We only did maybe half the stuff there and Josey asked three times during the trip if we could go back. The first thing we did was go to the section called Kidtropolis. They had given them each a pretend debit card when we first go there so we stopped at the atm machine and they withdrew all their cash (checking and savings, 40 bucks each).

Ben of course headed straight for the Vet's Office. He weighed, fed, washed, and x-rayed a cat to earn his 20 dollar paycheck. He also donated 5 dollars to the animal shelter while he was there, that's my animal lovin' Binky. Ben spent most of his time in Kidtropolis there.

After awhile Adam showed up at the vet with Jakers. Jake fell in love with a big stuffed chocolate lab and kept trying to escape with it. I actually saw one for sale later in the gift shop but I wasn't willing to part with 45 bucks for it.

Adam stayed with Ben at the vet and I took Jake to the grocery store. He found apples galore ("green apple", "red apple", "bad apple", "berry apple", "big apple", etc, the boy likes apples) and ran around for awhile with a lobster and fish. Speaking of Jake and his love of apples, there is a drawer in our fridge pretty much soley for apples. He will say "I wah apple", get one out, have me wash it, and chow down. Well, one time Adam put this big purple onion in there and when Jacob opened up that drawer he said "Apple, wha happen to you?". His eyes got so wide. It was fuh-nny.

Meanwhile Josey was off with Debbie (grownups outnumbering kids on this trip was way sweet) at City Hall planning a city. There was a table with road and building blocks and he had to arrange it just so. He's got me on the hunt for those blocks but so far I can't find them. If anyone knows where I can find them please let me know.

After awhile we all ended up at City Hall and Ben got to help build the city for a bit. Jake drove the police car. He wasn't really that impressed with it till another little boy wanted to drive then all the sudden he didn't want to get out for anything. The boy has got to work on the taking turns but he's got the evil eye all figured out.

Before we left Kidtropolis we went to the bank and the boys deposited their leftover money (only Josey spent any at all, 3 dollars on fake popscicles I think) and paychecks. If we should ever go back (I'm really hoping we do) they have all the money saved in their lil accounts and we got to keep the debit cards so they can withdraw it. Very cool.

After Kidtropolis Josey and Ben climbed up a 35 foot tower in the PowerPlay section. In all honesty I was kind of surprised that they actually both went all the way to the top. It creeped me out just watching. Yipes.

Once they had climbed that we went to the FlowWorks - "FlowWorks is an interactive exhibit, which requires kids to "dip" their hands into it to make it work!
An 18 feet tall Cauldron stands in the middle of it all! The more you play, the more it gets filled up with water. Once it’s full, water comes crashing down, making an unstoppable wave of fun and allowing other exhibit components to break their course!
Feel the rush of waters through a simulated Flood Plain, stream through an Aquaduct Maze. Or, serve as the mastermind behind a Hydro Switchboard. Navigate ways in which water's energy can be stored, released and manipulated and harness the power!"
It was pretty neat.

After awhile over at FlowWorks I took Jake over to EcoStation for a teeny bit where he picked up a rock and put it in one of the lil sandtables and looked at some baby birdies. Then Debbie and I took him up to the Tot Spot. It was pretty neat with lots of little things to do but we didn't stay long till Joey, Adam, and the fellas came up and it was time to go.

We did stop off at the gift shop first where Josey got a pullback bus, Ben got a hedgehog puppet he named Meatball, and Jake got Spongebob bubbles which were later confiscated because he threw them down the steps in the parking garage. Anyhoo we definitely need to go there again. Josey is already asking if he can go there for his birthday.

It was time for lunch so we decided to find the aquarium and then just find somewhere to eat that was close by it. As luck would have it there was actually a restaurant right at the aquarium so that's where we had lunch. Totally sweet - "Your underwater adventure begins as you are seated around the 150,000 gallon aquarium with excellent views of reticulated rays, majestic sawfish, shovel-nosed guitarfish and other fascinating creatures as they swim right by your table." It was really really cool. The food was delicious too. Debbie and I both got this tortilla wrap with a spinach tortilla, diced chicken, cheddar and montery cheese, bacon, avocado, and jalepeno (hold mine) ranch dressing. Ridiculously scrumptious.

When we were done eating we walked through the Aquarium Adventure Exhibit. It was way better then any aquarium I've ever been to for sure. It was all themed and divided into sections: Louisiana Swamp (cool big alligator snapping turtle that we at first thought was fake in there), Shipwreck, Rainforest (they had a snake in a big fake tree in there), Sunken Temple, Gulf of Mexico, Discovery Rig, and White Tigers of the Maharaja's Temple.

The Discovery Rig was by far the best part. In the center of the room they had a big round tank where you could reach in and touch stingrays, horseshoe crabs, and "other invertebrates". That was neat but the super duper neat-o part was this big bubble dome thing that you could crawl under the tank to get in and look up. I had seen that online beforehand but I don't think anyone else realized it at first because Ben was the first kid I saw do it and when he did everyone was just a pointing and laughing. It was double A++.

The line through the tiger section was way long so Adam went off to see if there was another way out and Josey followed him without telling anyone so we had a who where's Josey slight freakout (mostly me on the freaking part, I can't help it, I do that) so only Debbie and Ben saw the tigers which I don't get why there were tigers at an aquarium anyway, very random, but whatever. Before we went out to the amusement park part we went through the gift shop (there was no other way out, very clever) and Debbie bought the boys all a t-shirt. Jake's is way cute, has a cartoon stingray on it and says I Touched a Stingray.

The Shark Voyage hands down beat the socks off Nasa's way long and lame tram or whatever tour. "For added excitement, once you finish your expedition through the Aquarium Adventure Exhibit, you can take a thrilling ride on the CP Huntington train for a journey through the Shark Voyage. The blacktips, whitetips, sandtigers, zebra sharks, and sawfish in this 200,000 gallon underwater world will cure your curiosty about these incredible creatures!". It was not too long (ahem Nasa) and well it was just neat. They stopped in the aquarium tunnel for just a bit and the voiceover talked about how they lost a great white shark during the hurricane that they still hadn't recovered so of course further on down the line there was a skeleton that they said the shark must have got, then a splash and mechanical shark popping up out of the water. It was a very nifty lil ride, we did it twice.

Adam and the big boys went on the ferris wheel.

While they were on that I took Jake on the carousel. Yeah, never take Jake on a carousel, not a fan. I did get a picture before it started moving though.

After the big boys got off the ferris wheel I went on the carousel with them and then they played a couple of games. I have to mention because it was way swell of the gal, after we had to shell out 8 bucks for the shoot the water at the target game (because you have to have 4 people at 2 dollars each to play) and Josey won a stuffed shark we ended up going back and playing against two other folks to try and get Ben a shark - he didn't win but she gave him a shark anyway. Isn't just so handy dandy swell when people go out of their way like that? Very very.

Oh, FYI, Josey's shark is named Sharky Fenlaw and Ben's is sometimes Houston and sometimes Bill (his last name is Wood). The aquarium ( http://www.aquariumrestaurants.com/downtownaquariumhouston/flash_content/index.html ) is definitely another place I'd love to go to again.

Some Sonic for supper and swimming in the hotel pool wrapped that day on up.

Which leaves the beach. Ah, the beach. I should have Adam type this part really because I'm just kind of anti-outside, I really am. But alas Adam's no rambler so here I go. We got a bit of a late start so we just grabbed a lil this and that from the continental breakfast, packed up our stuff at the hotel and headed for Galveston Island.

We had to cross this big ole bridge to get to Galveston (Island and all ya know) so I got my "m3d" (what Ben calls our mp3 players) at the ready and as soon as we hit the bridge I played Supermassive Black Hole at full volume. It was awesome, stinking awesome.

The weather was perfecto, didn't feel hot and there was plenty of wind. The only time it felt the least bit hot to me was walking back to the car barefoot afterwards. I was pretty sure the skin on the bottom of my feet was gonna just peel right off. That was some hot hot sand in the ole parkin lot, yes it twas.

We splashed around, jumped over waves, tasted saltwater (not on purpose-eww), dug in the sand, made sand castles, walked along the beach collecting shells, just had us a nice day of hanging out at the beach.

So, here is why Adam should be commenting on this part, he says there's nothing like being at the beach, being out in the ocean and not seeing anything around you but water. Now I am very glad we went, had a great time, don't wish we wouldn't have went or anything like that, but if somebody asked me right now would you rather go swimming in the ocean or "some lame hotel pool" without a doubt I'd go with the hotel pool (which by the way I did NOT think was lame). I like the water, I love the water, the sticky salty sand - not so much. Again I have to say though, I had a great time at the beach, it's just I came, I saw, I swam, been there, done that, no need to do it again. Oh oh, Josey's favorite part of the whole trip was right before we left Debbie took some pictures of Adam, the boys, and I and the waves were moving us all about, to quote him his favorite part was "when Mama almost floated away".