Since we were so near Corpus Christi (for Texas anyway) and since the kids, especially Wesley, love aquariums, we decided to stop at the Texas State Aquarium on our way back to Austin from Port Aransas. From the website, we got the impression that the aquarium was a bit larger and dare I say nicer than it actually was, but it was plenty big enough for us to fill a few hours before getting back in the car. I wouldn’t make a special trip from Austin just to go to the aquarium, but it was worth stopping by since we were in the area.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before we got to the aquarium, we took a small ferry across the entry to Corpus Christi Bay. The ferries held about 20 cars each and made the crossing in about 3 minutes. During the crossing we saw some more Dolphins.  As you can see from this image from Google Maps, the ferries are pretty maneuverable (compared to the much larger Washington State ferries) and they’ll just go around obstacles.

In our case the ferry waited a bit and then zipped around a large oil tanker, the Eagle Augusta. It took us about an hour to get the aquarium by car. An hour after we got there we saw it go by us while we were watching the dolphin show at the aquarium.

The aquarium has three dolphins and they put on a pretty good show for about 15 minutes.  Jillian was more interested in climbing up and down the stairs, but Wesley got into it.

During and after lunch Wesley really got into the touch tank. They had a few kinds of ray, which by getting his sleeves really wet, Wesley could get a quick touch.  Too bad the water stank so much.

While there were a few nice exhibits (a couple were closed for repairs), the best part really is the dolphins. We spent a lot of time (more than the kids cared for) watching them under water. We thought they were swimming back and forth looking at us. Turns out the their side of the glass is mirrored. Probably a lesson in that for us somewhere.  On the upside, the aquarium wasn’t busy so we had the whole room to ourselves.

Jillian was still in the midst of being sick and was pretty warn out. Even though we were only at the aquarium a few hours she had had enough. J broke down and we decided it was time to go.

We had another four or so more hours to go in the car. We stopped for dinner at a kind of creepy Mexican restaurant (the food was okay, but not great) and had a very long drive home. It was a very long drive home. A very, very long drive home. But we made it and we’ll never go back, so it is all okay.

 

We picked my mom up at the airport and drove the four and a half hours more or less straight through to the beach house, stopping only at target (the kids were supposed to be wearing shoes when they got in the car) and the What-A-Burger By The Bay in Corpus Christi for dinner (Wesley likes their fries). Amber got the privilege of sitting in the back seat between Wesley’s booster and Jillian’s car seat.  She is both skinny enough to fit between them and has short enough legs. Lucky her!

The house, by the way is gorgeous. Much nicer than ours frankly. It is fully appointed with TVs, cable, internet access, dishes, silverware, pans, appliances, towels, blankets, sheets, pillows, you name it. It has four official bedrooms, plus a Murphy bed in the living room. So much bigger than our house! The kids enjoyed the jetted tub upstairs in the master bath.

The weather when we first got their was very Northwest only warmer. It was mostly overcast and windy, but still nice enough to walk around in shorts and a sweatshirt. Because of an offshore storm the waves were much bigger than normal. And apparently every surfer in Texas was out as the waves were rather unusual. By the time we left the waves had flattened to just a few inches high, the often driving wind had subsided and the sun was coming out. So we got the full range of weather possibilities (minus the rain, thankfully).

Both kids were in varying states of illness. Jillian, usually opposed to napping when healthy, seemed incapable of staying awake when in earshot of the shore. So we don’t have too many pictures of her awake at the beach. The couple of times we took her she passed out after only a few minutes.

For Jillian it only took about ten minutes for this:

to turn into this:

It happened to her on the pier, at the beach, anywhere she could hear the waves. Apparently Jillian’s Kryptonite is white noise.

A reasonable walk or short drive down the beach from the house is Horace Caldwell Pier. Oddly you have to pay to go on the pier even though it at first appears to be public.

Anway, $2 per person and you’re on. The day we were there the waters were full of surfers and the pier full of people fishing for anything but Hardheads (but not catching anything else apparently). The Hardhead or Sea Catfish is apparently abundant and according to one State of Texas website “it isn’t very tasty and the fish is difficult to clean”. They also have mildly toxic barbed spines that cause swelling and are really hard to pull out. What this means for the fish is that people catch them all the time, they want to throw them back,  but can’t touch them. So they take quite a beating as people fling them around, thump them on railings and yank on them with pliers trying to get their hooks out. It was a little disturbing. One gentleman, who seemed to have enough experience to treat the fish humanely caught a fish and let Wesley reel it in before smoothly removing the hook and dropping him back in the water.

I don’t know if it is typical or if it was because of the storm, but the beach was lined with all sorts of shells, sea stars, hermit crabs, crabs, and jelly fish in varying states of life.  Especially in the morning, before it had been picked clean, we had great luck finding shells and even some very large hermit crabs (bodies 4-5″ long).  Wesley “saved” several sea stars that had washed up on shore and was very proud of himself for doing it.

We found a surprising variety of shells: Lightning Whelks (the state shell of Texas), Olive snails, Sharks Eye snails, sand dollars, sea biscuits, Giant Eastern Murex, limpets, a plethora of clams, cockles and scallops, just to name a few. We also saw some dead cabbage head jellyfish and some moon jellyfish, too.

The shells spread out at home.

Lightning Whelk - Side View

Lightning Whelk - End View

Olive Snails

Great Eastern Murex

Cabbage head Jellyfish (We didn't bring him home)

The outer edge of Mustang Island is open to the ocean the inner edge is open to Corpus Christi Bay and is a much calmer swamp marsh; an ideal habitat for birds. We visited a bird sanctuary and saw pelicans (a couple of species), turtles, ducks, herons and most importantly, though at some distance, Roseate Spoonbills. It was really windy so most of the birds were just hunkering down on the lee side of the reeds. But we still saw quite a few for the few minutes the kids would put up with it.

Roseate Spoonbill

Pointing at Spoonbills.

Though there were many warning signs at the bird sanctuary, this is as close as we came to being eaten by a ‘gator.

Port A is nothing if not a typical tourist town. The population is only a few thousand and it is clear that tourism is the main industry. Here you’ll find everything you’d expect at any small tourist town, plus some things I hadn’t seen before. They had restaurants that would cook your catch for you, candy shops, places to rent these little gas golf cart things (primarily for driving on the beach road I guess), many giant sharks statues, at least two gift/surf shops on every corner and a good number of playgrounds and free piers for fishing. We did most of touristy stuff including taking the obligatory goofy pictures:

Inside a giant walk-through shark. These were all over town.

Giant Seahorses along the road.

Amber did a really good job of finding things for us to do that the kids would enjoy. She really ran the whole trip and kept everyone having a good time. At one pier we were able to see dolphins just swimming in the channel. We weren’t able to get a picture because they came and went so quickly and because the surf was rough due to winds, but it sure made Amber’s day. Wesley had a pretty good time, too.

On the pier where we saw dolphins.

My favorite photo from the whole trip.

Excited to go to the beach. Run!

Perhaps the kids’ favorite part of the house (mine, too) was the widow’s walk. We had to go up at least twice a day. Because the house is about a half block from the beach and because the beach has some pretty hefty dunes that block views of the ocean most of the houses in the neighborhood have some form of widow’s walk.  I imagine it would be great to sit up there  with a cool drink and read a book on a warm day.

Note the spiral staircase up to the widow's walk.

Looking up from the top of the spiral staircase.

On the walk near sunset.

Here is a 360 degree panorama from the widow’s walk near dusk. Click for a much larger view (it will take you to Flickr).

Panorama at dusk

We’ll post a “part two” about the trip to the Texas State Aquarium soon.  If you haven’t gotten enough pictures yet, you can check out our whole “Port Aransas” set on Flickr. But be warned it contains 450+ photos.

Oh, and one more thing… If you go to Port Aransas BEWARE THE ROBOTS. They’ll get you!

Look out!

 

This year the Blue Santa program was giving horse-drawn carriage rides (a year round staple in downtown Austin) in exchange for toy donations.  I read about it in the paper and thought it sounded fun.  We arrived shortly after it started expecting there would be a line.  Typically a ride for 4 people would be about $60 per half hour so it was really a pretty good deal.  But when we arrived at the downtown fire station we had a carriage waiting for us.  Maybe the cold weather had kept the people away.

It was a pretty chilly night and we bundled the kids up.  Earlier in the day Amber had taken Jillian and Wesley shopping and had tried to give Wesley a Santa hat to wear for the ride.  But he refused saying something along the lines of “No.  Santa will give me a Santa hat.”  So magically a gift bag complete with Santa hat was waiting for us on the sidewalk when Wesley got out of the car downtown.  It is amazing how easily they believe.  He was sure it was from Santa, wore it proudly, and never had a single doubt.

We toured around downtown hitting the highlights including Sixth Street, Congress Ave, and the Driskill hotel.  We were pulled ably by a Red Belgian Draft horse named Clay.  He was friendly and let Wesley give him a few pets on the head at the end of our ride.  Jillian spent most of the ride yelling “Neigh!” and trying to jump from the carriage.  It was rather cozy the four of us cuddled together underneath a red velvet blanket.

Afterwords we drove up Congress to see the Capital tree and then headed home.  The strings of lights in the picture, which look all white are actually new LED lights the city is rather proud of.  They’ve been touting their energy efficiency for a few weeks now. And in truth they are very neat. They change color, play patterns and in general look nice when viewed down Congress Ave.

 

That’s right.  We got snow. The first in several years for Austin (though they did have some rather large ice storms a couple of years ago).  What makes this even more unusual is that on the 9th, the day the snow fell late in the evening, it was 81 degrees.  A record high.  By the time the snow started falling just before midnight we were at freezing and getting some lovely flurries that I woke Amber up to see.

It wasn’t much, a quarter inch is probably generous, and it had mostly melted by the time the kids got up, but Amber got a few shots of them before they were too cold and had to go in.

And here is Jillian doing her best to clean up the deck. She is very fastidious.

This will likely be it for as long as we live in Texas.  I came home after my morning run to play with the kids, but it was much less impressive in the daylight.  No snowmen. Oh, well.

 

We camped with a group of Joshua’s co-workers and friends June 21-22 at Emma Long Metropolitan Park, which runs along Lake Austin.  This is the view from our campsite looking down to the water.  (It is taken at about 10 at night.)

A friend got a boat for the morning and the group took turns going out on the boat.  Joshua, Wesley, Jillian, Elliott and I were all passengers for the following pictures:

Wesley was unsure of being on the raft.  He was on it total of maybe 3 minutes.

Joshua love it!!!  He was amazing.  He was even doing a couple of 360′s.

Then it was my turn with Jillian.  But all she wanted to do was go to sleep.  She almost fell asleep on her 3 minute raft ride.

Then I told Bill (who was driving the boat) that I wanted to crash into the water.  Big mistake.  It really hurts.  This is me right before I landed face first on the lake.  My black eye lasted less than a week. 

Then after lunch, Joshua took the kayaks out.  He took Wesley and Elliott for a ride and Mat was in the green boat.   After he took the kids out he went out on his own.  He paddled  down and into a channel and saw some amazing wildlife and a really cool zip line that connected two houses on either side of the channel.  How cool would that be?

While Joshua was out on his own, Jillian really wanted to be in the kayak.  She tried to climb into the seat and then climbed up on top of the kayak and back down the other side over and over.

The rest of the time was pretty much spent doing this…  They both loved the water.

Here is Joshua and Wesley at the end of the day.  He did not want to leave the water.

It was a fun experience.  I think the next time we go will be in the fall when it is much cooler and we can have a real camp fire.

 

Epicurious “Peak-Season Map”

 

These are some that I picked in a field near the small playground at the park.

Now imagine a ton of pictures on flickr with the kids playing and sitting in a field of mostly blue and bits of the red and pink (like the ones above) … That is what you will have to do because I did not LISTEN to Joshua!

Two nights ago Joshua came home from a run and told me about a great field near our house with a ton of Texas Wildflowers in it. He suggested for me to go the next morning and take some pictures – because he thought it would get mowed soon.

Well it was really windy yesterday morning, Wesley was still sick and I was feeling very tired – so I did not go to take pictures.

Later that afternoon we headed out to the little playground (without the camera). I was fearful of the trip because neither Jillian or Wesley had taken a nap, but we needed fresh air and I wanted Wesley to get some of his built up energy out (he had been running a fever of 102 for the past 2 days and was really crabby – but as it turns out he has strep throat – we took him to the doctor after our trip to the park). Jillian fell asleep in the Ergo and Wesley walked/ran the way there.

Before we could even see the playground and field with the flowers, I heard the lawnmower. I thought…ok they will just mow around the flowers BUT…damn Joshua was right, they are mowing!

Sure enough there was a man working on the field. Wesley and I went to an area that he was not at and picked some of the beautiful “weeds” that were to be mowed down.

Hopefully we will get some pictures of the kiddos in the Texas blue bells soon – we better go soon or they might all be mowed down.

 

With the increased daylight I’ve been spending more time looking at the yard. Notice I didn’t say lawn. Because technically lawn would indicate grass while yard is more lenient, ask any prison inmate whose spent time in the yard. We don’t actually have much grass, but then again we aren’t getting shanked in the yard either so all in all I can’t complain too much. What we have is mostly a mixture of really tall grasses (not lawn-like at all) and various and sundry weeds predominantly dandelions.

These aren’t the cuddly aren’t they pretty dandelions I grew up with. Sure they are yellow and sure you can blow the seeds around, but they have one very important difference. These dandelions are poky. Their leaves are spiky and they hurt when you step on them with bare feet. Just ask Wesley. Think of them as a cross between a friendly NW dandelion and a thistle. That is just about right.

Wesley and I headed to Home Depot to pick up some yard tools. Owning your first house is expensive, not just because of the mortgage and taxes and insurance, but because of the fact that you don’t own any of the tools you might need to do even simple things. We needed a hand pruner, a lopper, and a dandelion puller. We made it out for 60 bucks. Oh and by the way, going to Home Depot with Wesley is just like going to the toy store with Wesley. . . if everything at the toy store will kill or maim him.

The pruners were for the Texas Yellow Bells.  Pretty bushes out front of our house that have lovely yellow flowers on them all summer.  According to a number of sources they are perfect for xeriscaping here in Texas as they are native to the area.  That means you don’t have to water them.  I’m not sure if it was the fact that I didn’t water them or the freezes that we had but they ended up looking like this:

Not pretty.  Brown, clearly dead and with used up seed pods dangling all over.  They kind of drug down the look of the yard.   So we cut them back to the ground.  It is what they said to do online and the internet wouldn’t lie.  Would it?  Here they are.  The bright green little bushes are this year’s growth.  Also note the “lawn” made entirely of broad leafed weeds.

As for the dandelions we went to work with the puller.  The best $6 I’ve spent at Home Depot.  It just looks like a mangled screw driver, but it really works well.  You insert it into the ground at the base of the dandelion, catch the root with the notch on the end and as Wesley will tell you “Pop!” it up.  Otherwise the plant isn’t strong enough to pull on and you simply rip the top off leaving poky leaves and roots to keep growing.  I pulled out about 20 gallons (the size of our yard waste bucket) of dandelions from our front yard alone.  What’s left of the yard would probably fit in a second bucket.  Hopefully something grassy will grow in all the empty places.  If not our yard may become a little dustbowl this summer.

 

In my defense I repeat:  The cable was run across the top of the ground through my flower bed.  Amber spoke to the neighbors and confirmed that their cable too just runs across the ground through their back yard.  Texas is messed up.  In Washington, at least everywhere I’ve lived, utilities come down the street, not in the back yard and they are buried or properly strung from poles.

Anyhow, we have 8 channels and nothing is on.

 

At the end of another nice Texas winter day (70-75F most days lately) we went to the park. We played and Wesley got tired and hot. So he sat down at the base of a tree to catch a rest and a little shade. Good idea. When we caught up to him he said “Ants!” and pointed a few feet in front of him. I immediately pulled him up and we brushed off ants from his legs and feet. Then we ripped off his pants and got those ants off too. Luckily he wasn’t on a big ant hill and the ants weren’t in full attack mode. He only got 7 bites total.  They bite repeatedly until you remove them.  As you can see the bites really swell up (those welts are about the size of a silver dollar and protrude about a half inch).  Amber and Wesley both tell me that they are really, really itchy. They itch for days. Poor guy… you can tell they are driving him crazy.