July 4th // Vacation

For July 4th, we went to my parent's house. Well, their condo at South Padre Island. It was a long drive. A LONG drive. We stopped at my sister's in Austin on the way down to split it up. We had fun. Listened to music, watched the iPad, read books, played with cards, and ate lots of snacks.

As soon as we got there, we headed to the beach. Little man fell asleep as soon as we parked. So, we didn't last very long on the sand. He loved the water and the waves. He would run out there and we would have to chase him down. He begged and begged for us to take him in the water. We definitely did... over and over. He collected a few shells, but the waves.... the waves were  distracting. My little water baby...

The girls and I did a little bit of shopping on the island. I don't think anyone actually bought anything, but we went to a few shops. My niece, Ashlee, is getting big. She's almost 10 and acts 18. She has instagram, she wears my clothes, she has raybans, she rocks. 

We watched the fireworks on the bay. They do them every Friday, but for the 4th they try to go all out. It wasn't as good as I've seen in the past, but it was cool. Jack was in awe until we told him that he couldn't walk around on the dock we were on because he might fall in the water. We ended up going back upstairs to the condo before anyone else. We watched most of it. He was really tired anyway and we had a blow-up bed waiting!

One of the best parts about doing to see my mom, is seeing my mom and her backyard. Her and my step-dad work really hard to make it what it is. It's the best in the morning, before it gets too hot. They have a koi pond, pool, deck, plants and plants. It looks as is it's out of a magazine or resort.

My entire family was there as were all the kids. We did some crafts. Some worked and some definitely didn't. There a whole other post on that later. I did get to make some mugs for my mom and my new kitchen using A Beautiful Mess' method. 

In my hometown, a bakery went on Cupcake Wars and won. So now cupcake shops are opening up everywhere. We tried to go to the place that won, but waiting in line for a cupcake for almost an hour with a 3 year old.... not a good idea. We went to two others and they were good. Maybe next time I'll try the famous cupcakes. 

On our last night there, the girls decided that we needed to go have some fun. It's a rarity that both my sisters-in-law, mom, and cousin get to go somewhere without all our kids.  But they dad's were awesome and let us out. We went to a bar for a drink then..... Magic Mike. I'm not going to go on and review it because there wasn't much to review. The only part I liked about the entire movie was the hip-hop dancing (the guys had their clothes on for that, btw).  But hanging out with these girls was the best part.

 

Now I miss them...all. It's really hard living almost 10 hours away from my entire family. I hope one day that we can move a little closer. But we had a great little mini-vacation!!!