Kemble's Big Sister Vacation

(***doing a little housekeeping on the blog. Got a new blog title, and a new look! Also realized I had several blogs I'd written but for some reason never published, so these will be way out of place, but I didn't want to not post them!)

From October 2012:

A few weekends ago, the three of us packed up and headed Southbound 35 to San Antonio for a weekend devoted to Kemble, in honor of her becoming a big sister (and before someone else starts to steal the show from her!)

On the way, we stopped a couple of times for food and shopping, and arrived at our hotel in San Antonio, where we quickly settled in before heading out to the Riverwalk. She loved the ducks! She begged to ride the riverboat, but we were on a mission to get back before the Aggie game started. We had a yummy supper at Casa Rio, then made our way back to the hotel. We found the Aggie game online and watched together until we all fell asleep (then they lost!) :(

The next morning we were up bright and early and headed to the Alamo after breakfast. Our hotel was about a block from the Alamo and a block from the Riverwalk - it was perfect! We toured the Alamo, walked around the grounds and snapped some pictures of our beautiful girl, then headed back to prepare for our big destination of the weekend: SeaWorld! (After some yummy Freebirds on the way)

First, we fed the dolphins - which was my personal favorite part of the trip, and now Kemble talks about it the most although I am pretty certain Shamu was her favorite. There's just something about a dolphin that gets  me in my happy place. Kemble and I fed them, and tried to pet them, but they were only interested in hands that were full of fish.  Then we caught an Azul show featuring dolphins, beluga whales and diving acrobats. It was like Cirque meets Sea World and it was pretty enjoyable, but Kemble's favorite part of the show were the macaws and tropical birds who circled around the stadium at the end of the show.  After that we saw a sea lion show that was extremely corny but had Kemble giggling the entire time. Afterwards we walked down to the bottom and the sea lion did a trick and splashed Kemble... she freaked out because she does not like her clothes to get wet, but after she was dry she thought it was pretty funny! She played a little in the kids area, and we wished we had swimsuits (and another day!) to let her do all the "wet" activities.

We saw Shamu and she was awed and amazed, as were Stephen and I. It's just really amazing to see those giants do their thing.  We headed back to try to pet the dolphins again, but they were closed for the evening, so we settled for sharks, fish and stingrays in the aquarium instead. We caught some burgers for supper, then headed to the spookier parts of the day. After dark this time of year, Sea World becomes Howl-o-Scream. We saw a show called Monster Stomp that was actually very good. It was a percussion show (think Stomp) with a musical feel to it. I was worried Kemble would be scared but she wasn't at all and soaked up every minute. After that we went back to see Shamu again, this time it was dark so there were cool lights, the trainers were in glow-in-the-dark skeleton wetsuits, and Shamu did his thing to Halloween music. It was equally impressive as the first show.  We were all exhausted and headed back to the hotel where we all crashed.

The next morning, we went to the Children's Museum which was less than a block from our hotel as well. Kemble LOVED it! I was so glad we went. There was so much to do there: experimenting with bubbles, learning circuitry, Lego car races, a pretend bank, an airplane she could sit in and fly - as well as the air traffic control tower, a piano to play, tea parties to host, a cow to "milk", fish and snakes in tanks, lots of cool experimental stuff, but her favorite thing in the place was a kid-sized HEB. She absolutely loved shopping for all her favorite things, then checking them out at the real-live register with scanner.  She's still talking about it!  Stephen joked that we could easily set up the same thing at home, but this was truly like a Kemble sized grocery store and she was in heaven.

We had lunch on the Riverwalk, and then a very nice gentleman gave us his tickets for the riverboat ride, which still had a few good hours left. Kemble LOVED the boat and grinned from ear to ear the entire time. After that, we headed out. We went to Natural Bridge Caverns for Kemble's first cave experience. I was worried she'd think it was boring, but she loved it!

Afterwards, we headed into Austin to catch the bats leaving the Congress Avenue bridge for their nightly hunt. I will never get tired of that, and Kemble and Stephen loved it too.

After a long drive home (Kemble was wide awake and wanted to have serious conversations about life and I just wanted to sleep!), we finally made it home. She's still talking about it daily, I think she truly had the time of her life! Now let's start planning Disney! :)