So for Christmas we surprised the kids. It was actually all Shawn's idea and he wanted to surprise me too but he said he had to tell me in advance because he needed help with a few things (like booking the flights and buying all the clothes.)
In June of last year, Shawn took me out to dinner and told me he had booked a Cruise to the Western Caribbean. He booked it for all four of us and he wanted to surprise the kids for Christmas. He even had booked the excursions and the Hotel in Galveston. He said he had booked the hotel for 2 nights so that we could go and explore Galveston before leaving on the Cruise. To say I was surprised was is a huge understatement. I was beyond surprised.
We kept the secret until Christmas and surprised the kids. We also talked our friends the Slessers into booking with us so that both us and the kids would have friends on the cruise. The kids were so excited and it was a long month until we could leave.
We got up super early on February 4th so that we could get to Galveston and have most of that day to go exploring. That was the plan. Unfortunately that is not the way things worked out for us. We didn't think about it being a problem but we booked a connecting flight from SLC to Dallas and then Dallas to Houston because it was less expensive than a non-stop flight. We then were going to rent a car and drive the hour to Galveston. We got out of SLC, no problem. But when we got to Dallas our flight was delayed and then cancelled because of some freak ice storm that came through. We wouldn't have had a problem but the Super Bowl also happened to be in Dallas that weekend. All the flights were booked for the rest of the weekend. We started freaking out. We couldn't even book a one-way car rental because they wouldn't let the cars leave Dallas because they wanted them for the Super Bowl and to rent them round trip at the last minute was super expensive. A-N-D they ended up closing the highways that went from Dallas to Houston because of the ice. What were we to do? We stood in line after line and we got bumped off of flight after flight. Finally with a stroke of luck, after 10 hours at Dallas airport we had an airport agent that got us the last four seats on a 6:30pm flight to Houston. Yippee....until we got on the flight and it was delayed, again. And then we had to de-ice the plane. We finally made it to Houston about 10:30pm, only to find out that the road was going to be closed into Galveston SOON because of the ice. We jumped into the car, starving, and we headed to Galveston. Once we were on the road that could have been closed, but thankfully wasn't we stopped at a "Whataburger:" Thank goodness for 24 hour burger joints. We finally got to Galveston. We didn't even take a second that night to look at the amazing hotel that Shawn had booked for us before we fell into bed and fell into a deep, deep sleep.
The next morning we went to IHOP for breakfast while we fought with the doctor from home about getting Savannah an antibiotic. Nicholas had gotten Strep throat earlier in the week and Savannah woke up with it that morning in Galveston. Her doctor was not in the office with it being a Saturday, and the on-call doctor was NOT about to give me an antibiotic for her over the phone from another state. I threw a fit and told her to call my doctor, whether he was on-call or not and to talk to him. He had promised me that if Savannah woke up with a sore throat, that I would have no problem calling and getting an antibiotic. It would have been nice if he would have put a note in her file though. We finally got the on-call doctor to call in a prescription, we picked it up and finally we could go sight-seeing, one day later than planned.
Galveston was so fun. It was one big beach. We love the beach, in fact Nick keeps saying over and over, that he wants to move, just to live by a beach. We drove from one side of the island to the other side of the island. We took pictures of our "Dream Beach Houses." We stopped at many different beaches picking up shells and coral and looked around a few different shops, that were right on the water. We tried to go to the "Fishing Pier" so Shawn could go fish in the Ocean but it was closed, which was really weird for a Saturday. We thought maybe because it was a bit windy but who knows the real reason. We also drove around looking at the Mansions in town. Our Friends the Slessers got to Galveston just about dinner time so we met them for dinner and then went and sat in our hot tub at the Hotel and let the kids swim. It was a really fun but relaxing day after a really not fun and not relaxing day the day before when we were stuck in Dallas.
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