Thursday, December 29, 2011

San Antonio, In Brief





Since my midwife would not allow me to fly home for Christmas (sob), we decided to take a family trip to San Antonio instead. Jon had to work Christmas Eve Eve, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, so we left on Monday, the day after Christmas. And guys, it was a great trip, God blessed us. We seemed to randomly miss really long lines and busy spurts pretty much everywhere we went! Brennan slept great in the hotel (always a concern with him), I felt pretty good, and we got to do what we really wanted to do. Our hotel was right by the Riverwalk so we were close to most everything. Here's a brief synopsis. It's hard to choose which pictures to post when there are so many!

Our first day there, we ate Tex Mex at Pappasito's thanks to a gift card, and then took a FREE boat taxi on the riverwalk. The riverwalk was beeeautiful at night all lit up with Christmas lights!




It was pretty chilly for Texas!


Tuesday we ate a free breakfast at the hotel due to a groupon voucher. The hotel we stayed at was gorgeous St. Anthony Riverwalk Hotel (thank you, Groupon). Then we headed out to the Alamo.


Part of the hotel lobby

Typical tourist photo in front of The Alamo.

I took the audio tour while Jon graciously walked through with Brennan. I love history (I was a history minor in college), and really enjoyed learning all about the Alamo and it's past. It passed from Spanish owned, onto Mexico, onto Texas and for awhile was a merchants warehouse. The room that really got to me was the room women and children stayed in during Santa Anna's assault on the Alamo. General Santa Anna let them all go after the defeat to warn the rest of Texas of his army's strength. Instead, it caused Texans resolve to go up and eventually was a turning point in the war. If your a history nerd-o like me, you can read up on the Alamo here. As we were leaving the Alamo, we saw the huuuge line of people waiting to get in that we just happened to miss.

After the Alamo, we ate lunch on the Riverwalk and then headed back to the hotel for B's nap. It worked out well because Jon was able to meet with one of his 3104Studios clients who is based in SA while Brennan napped in the hotel. Afterwards, we took a river boat tour (again, just missing a super long line) on the Riverwalk, ate dinner and shopped around. Brennan was kind of a disaster from about 6:00 on so we made a quick night of it.

Wednesday, Jon ran out and bought us bagels for breakfast, we checked out of the hotel, and headed to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. The gardens were beautiful, there was a kids butterfly exhibit, cactus garden, rose garden, log cabin, ampitheatre, japanese garden, sensory garden, waterfalls, etc. Jon set up our camera on a tree branch and we were finally able to get a family photo:


Playing around with the butterfly exhibit

As we were leaving the gardens, we saw a huge group of people entering and were thankful it was so quiet while we were there. We headed back to Houston after that (and stopped briefly for Brennan to pee on the side of road, in which he refused). I miss seeing our families at Christmas, mainly because we love them. :) I dont' care about holiday traditions, but I do care about seeing all of them! But I'm thankful we were able to do this together just the 3 of us before Baby #2 shows up and I'm so glad it was a good time. As they say down here, go hug the neck of your loved ones! Adios!

2 comments:

Erin Zubert said...

So glad you had such a great and memorable trip! Westin saw the picture of you outside the Alamo and asked, "Is that there new house?" Ha!

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