San Antonio, We Love You!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010 by Sparkbark | Leave a comment

We had a quick weekend trip a few weeks back to San Antonio and LOVED IT! What a great city! We visited the Alamo, walked the Riverwalk, the Witte Museum (fantastic!), and — best of all — went to Six Flags. The boys love adventure parks and Cole declared this one his favorite since the roller coasters were all “big”. We have never taken them to a huge Disney park so their perspective is slightly limited. We love Adventureland Des Moines (clean and great for smaller kids – lots of little kid rides). We also love Worlds of Fun in Kansas City but it is dirty and the food is gross. We REALLY liked Silver Dollar City near Branson, Missouri – that is such a fun town, too. Don’t forget to eat at Landry’s if you go anywhere near Branson – fantastic food. But, for Texas, San Antonio’s Six Flags beats Schlitterbahn hands down. Of course, we’ve only been to Schlitterbahn at Galveston – perhaps the New Braunfels one is better. Worth a try!

Galveston Schlitterbahn II

Saturday, August 29, 2009 by Sparkbark | Leave a comment

We had a Second Day pass that needed to be used in the next week or so, so we decided to head down to Galveston today to Schlitterbahn. We had to make one stop on the way, however, and since our GPS is broken and needing to be sent back to HP for repairs we had to take written instructions (gasp! the stone age!). Hmmm…not so good. We took every back road possible and we could have reached our destination a gazillion times faster if we’d have just looked at a map and taken the highways. Oh well. We scored some great deals at the XPEDX Retail Store in Houston then on to Galveston! The boys had a blast and they were so easy to locate in their new rash guard shirts. I hope Cole doesn’t mind matching his brothers. He doesn’t usually care about such things (and I know I’m lucky!). At least, he doesn’t care enough to TELL me. Plus, it’s better than being sunburnt (sunburned?). All in all – a very great day.

Oh! One kid funny: The highway was closed in one spot so there was a massive delay and Don was a true Texan in his SUV and crossed the grass/curb median to the frontage road just like everybody else…Cole asked if it was illegal to which I replied, “Yes!” and to which Gabe replied, “Uhhh….I’m not going to jail!” It’s good to know he’d stick with you through thick and thin!

Galveston & Schlitterbahn for the 4th of July!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009Monday, July 6, 2009 by Sparkbark | Leave a comment

We had a blast. It wasn’t quite as fun as Noah’s Ark in the Wisconsin Dells but it was really fun! Afterwards, we wanted to eat at Joe’s Crab Shack so we followed Lole’s directions (our GPS is named Lole) and she took us along Seawall which was crawling because of fireworks off the beaches of Galveston and it ended up we couldn’t get to the restaurant because it was blockaded so we went to the next nearest one and when we got there it was boarded up from hurricane Ike damage and hadn’t been repaired (probably never will be). You can see the mark on the wall is well above my hand where the water line was during the hurricane. There were a ton of cars in the parking lot, though, so we asked a kid what all the cars were for and he told us he worked at one of 3 restaurants nearby so we walked to one called Fisherman’s Wharf (next to Willie G’s Steakhouse) and we had a great time – it was right on the harbor and had a neat ship we could watch just outside our window. The kids thought it was really fun and great food.