Lillian and Reed's First Trip to the Beach

Well, it seems that the second child gets to experience things earlier in life (I remember this from watching my little brother get to do things at a younger age than I did them) and the beach is the first of such things for our two littles who enjoyed their first trip to the beach this summer!

At the start of June when the weather was still relatively mild (for Texas) we met up with Michael's brothers' families, and Michael's parents in Galveston to kick off Summer with a little family vacation.

We stayed at Pointe West, a little group of condos slightly removed from the main part of Galveston, where each family had their own room and bathroom and shared living and kitchen so we could enjoy visiting and relaxing together after the kids went to bed - cute condo with a great little setup.

We arrived in Galveston on Friday afternoon and set out to see the beach.  Although Reed was tired and a little fussy, as you can hear on the video, Lillian marched herself into the wind toward the boardwalk that would take us over to the beach saying "I'na see the ocean! I'na go to beach!" the whole way.  An apparent product of our preparation she seemed completely underwhelmed by the vastness or noise of the ocean - better than scared I guess.   She kept pointing toward the water and walking forward and even stomped over the seaweed to get to the waters edge (this surprised me most), but then was a little unnerved by the water coming up to wash over her feet.  She did have her moments of not wanting to walk on the sand and get her feet dirty, but compared to the stories I have heard about MY first trip to the ocean where I ran screaming the other direction, I would say she handled it pretty well!

By 6:30 am every day the kids were all up and at 'em, but we fueled up on coffee and good breakfasts and had a great time watching the almost-3-year-old, 2-year old, 11 month old and 5 month old play together.  We did a beach day and a pool day and part of one day with some rainy weather and just lounging around the house.  We played on the playground in the neighborhood, did a lazy river over at one of the other pools, flew kites, fed sea gulls - all classic beach activities.  It was fun in spite of our exhaustion and I'm happy that we ended up where we did (originally we'd entertained a bigger beach endeavor like Gulf Shores) with the kids at the ages they are....

Monday night, our last night in town, me, Michael and the brother and sis-in-law that remained went out for a nice dinner while Nana and Papa watched the kids.  It was the perfect ending to our busy time there in Galveston and a very yummy meal at Rudy and Paco's.

Post-Galveston a wise woman pointed out that there is a large difference between 'vacations' and 'traveling with family' when you have children this age and though I couldn't agree with this statement more, these are the experiences that make the best memories and I look forward to "traveling with our family' again!