Spring Break- Starting with Texas

There's a lot to unpack with this Spring Break trip.  It was EPIC.  I will say that right off.  But gosh there were a lot of bumps.  Let's get into it...

Months ago we started planning a cruise for Spring Break.  We asked Cheryl if she wanted to come, and I believe Sara and Dan were involved in the conversation and also wanted to do a cruise so they jumped on board.  Brooke and Jeff were not hard to convince.  The whole family on a cruise ship?!  Yes please!

Unfortunately Hailee is serving a mission in Dominican Republic right now.  She found out we were going on a cruise without her and she was upset.  Just for a minute though.

Speaking of Hailee, she's had a lot of bumps in her mission experience as well.  Starting with getting ran over by a big motorcycle while walking on the sidewalk.  The men riding it got up and left her there on the ground.  Her companion got her help and she ended up in the hospital.  Amazingly she was not seriously injured, just very bruised and battered.  Fast forward a few months and cute Hailee is experiencing major neck/spine pain from the accident but she's trying to keep it to herself because she doesn't want to be forced to come home.  She also got dengue fever shortly after that, and then was transferred to an area where her apartment didn't even have running water.

What does any of this have to do with Spring Break?  Wait for it...  Her companion knew she was in pain and having a hard time being on her feet all day and finally told her she needed to tell the mission president or she would call him herself.  Hailee was sent home for physical therapy on her neck/spine but continued serving in different capacities while home so she could return after a few months.  The timing for this worked out so that she would be home for the cruise.  And miraculously Brooke was able to add her to their reservation!

It was so perfect.  It would've been perfect.  The physical therapist she was seeing is a good golf friend of Jeff and Ryan.  Two days before the flight to Texas where we would board our ship, she was getting acupuncture from this PT and somehow punctured her lung in the process.  She ended up in the hospital in severe pain (this girl can't catch a break!!)  The problem with a punctured lung is that she can't fly.  They said she wouldn't be able to fly for three months, which obviously meant the cruise was out.  But also it sounded like she wouldn't be going back to Dominican Republic on time either, and at that point they might just release her.  Jeff and Brooke canceled their whole Spring Break.  So their family was out. (She healed faster than expected and she was able to return to DR to finish!)

We were all bummed but the trip must go on.  The rest of us drove to Provo to board an Allegiant flight on Friday March 15th.  We arrived in Houston late that night and stayed in a hotel close to the airport before catching a shuttle to Galveston the next afternoon.  The AirBnb house we got was so cute!  Galveston has some cute houses.

We walked a mile or so to the beach.  They have a cute pier with rides and stuff, but the water was not pretty, lol.  It is probably the ugliest beach I've even been to.

We got an orange cream Frosty at Wendy's and walked back.  I rented a Jeep (only because that was literally the only option in Galveston on Turo) so we went to the grocery store to get some breakfast foods and snacks and we got Domino's.  We also used the Jeep to transport all of us to the Port, it took three trips but I had heard it's really hard to find an Uber or anything like that in Galveston so it seemed like the best option.  The morning did not go as planned, but I'll get into that in the next post...

Fast forward to after the cruise.  Allegiant doesn't fly out every day so we couldn't get a flight out until Monday.  We needed a place to stay the night after disembarking.  We got a hotel near the beach (we didn't realize the beach was so blah, lol).  We couldn't check in yet so we hung out in the lobby all decompressing and trading pictures and catching up on all the things in our social lives we had missed.  Nobody even really complained because we were so tired from the big week we had had.  We got Whataburger, and I will say I wasn't expecting much but I was a fan!  Huge burger, Dr Pepper freeze, can't complain.

Sara came up with this idea to go see Waco while she was in Texas, even though it was like 4 hours away.  Oh, Ryan and Dan had taken a shuttle to Houston to pick up some rental vans for us to use for the day and we could return them the next day at the airport.  That worked out well.  Anyway, Sara decided to rent another car so her and Cheryl could do a quick Waco overnight.  Rachel went too.  I wasn't worried because we had plans to go to Waco in a couple weeks to see the eclipse.  UNFORTUNATELY I received a call from the stupid Super 8 while on the cruise and they left a message asking me to call them back.  I didn't have that option very much on the cruise and the few times I tried the manager was never available.  So I finally got through and this Monday in this hotel and she told me that they had to cancel all the reservations because of this government program that houses battered women or something.  They didn't know they would still be housing them, supposedly.  I was highly suspicious that they wanted me to cancel so they could rent the room at a higher rate for the eclipse.  It was also suspicious because my sister in law had booked the same type of room from Hotels.com as well and they didn't call her to cancel.  I'm seriously getting worked up again just talking about it.  I was ready to book a super crappy hotel for $600.  But ultimately we ended up canceling the whole trip.  I'm still bitter.  We heard it would be cloudy.  They had changed our flights from 1pm to 6am, which is just a crappy time.  I just got tired.  Exhausted from traveling and jumping back into real life and when I realized we could probably get our flights refunded, I just did that.  But it was hard to see everyone's eclipse pictures.  My mom saw it in Ohio.  I had a handful of friends that went to Dallas or somewhere near.  Anyway, the point is I don't know if or when I will see Waco.  Texas is not really high on my list of vacation spots so who knows.  Didn't see Waco.  Didn't see the eclipse.  Boooooo.

But I did get to run along the beach and although the water is brown, the sunrise is still pretty and the temperature was lovely.

Everybody knows when you go to Texas, you have to go to Bucee's.  We were skeptical about all the hype.  But now we get it.  It is actually really awesome.   We got pulled pork or brisket sandwiches, Big Red soda (the kids tried pineapple cream? Or some other strange fountain drink flavors they had).  It was fun.

Then we found a park to waste some time before the movies started.  Our flight wasn't until 9pm (and if you think Allegiant was on time, that's funny.  We didn't fly until like midnight, didn't get home until like 6am after driving through the night from Provo.  Not recommended, but kids need to go to school, especially when you have an AP class you can't miss.)  Anyway, we decided to go to the movies because it was hotter than hot outside with a whole lot of humidity.  This little ninja warrior course was pretty cool though.  Kaden doesn't mind getting a little sweaty.  Or a lot sweaty.

Texas is weird.  The heat and humidity was not cool.  They had some strange bugs...  These were tiny.  But I have since heard about this furry caterpillar that will sting you with all it's tiny legs or pincers or something else that will make it hard to breathe, etc.  Yowzer.  I'll take Idaho even if there's still feet of snow in March.

Ryan went to a show he wanted to see (Dune? Probably something else, I don't remember.)  The kids and I went to the newest Minion one.  Despicable Me 4?  I don't remember.  I think I fell asleep.  Then we got some food even though we weren't hungry and went to the airport even though it was still early.  Sara's family and Cheryl were there so at least we had cousins to hang out with.  And we waited for hours.  And, as stated, arrived home at 6am.  Where the girls slept for a couple hours and then went to school. (At least they got a little sleep in the car on the 4 hour drive home.)