Happy New Year!

Although we promised ourselves that we would start getting up early in preparation for going back to the real world of work and school, Trevor and I slept until we woke up this morning. Granted, we stayed up until the unheard of hour of 11:15 pm (we're seriously hard-core party animals), but we still needed to make an effort to get up.

Anyway, as we were sitting in the living room, sipping coffee and trying to wake up, Trevor made a most unusual request.

"How about we get out of the house with the kids and take a road trip?"

The silence was a bit deafening, due to the fact the day I had planned out in my head was the polar opposite of a road trip. Mine was more along the lines of laying on the couch and watching movies, never getting out of my flannel pajamas and perhaps getting in a game or two of Cadoo with Nathan. However, Trevor very seldom wants to just "get out of the house" so we were galvanized into action by his excitement about driving down towards Galveston.

I should mention a small detail here....this was a 90 mile trip one way. Yes folks, 90 miles with two children and the promise of a beach somewhere along the way. We went south through the boon docks of southeast Texas, and ended up on High Island. We ate lunch at a local dive restaurant, and got ready for the trip on the Bolivar ferry.

We ended up waiting about 40 minutes for the ferry, but it was worth the wait to see Nathan and Grace get so excited. We got out of the Tahoe, and went up to the observation deck with the bag of crackers we brought to feed to the seagulls. We were told that we had to go to the back of the ferry on the bottom deck to feed the birds, so we made our way back down to enjoy the aerial acrobatics of the gulls. Nathan just loved throwing the crackers into the flock and Trevor even had a gull take one directly from his hand. I took several pictures of the birds to try to show how close the gulls were to our heads. I could have literally reached up and touched them.

After the ferry ride (and a melt-down on Gracie's part because we had to get back in the Tahoe), we went on to Stuart beach in Galveston. Nathan lamented that he had not brought his swimming suit, and no amount of logic could convince him that the water was too cold. Gracie wanted to build a sand castle like Curious George, but I wasn't about to let them get covered in sand. I foresee a trip to the beach this summer!

After a pit stop at McDonalds, we decided to make our way back home and ended up going back to the mainland by way of the Lynchburg ferry. The road to the ferry also goes right past the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas. We promised Nathan and Grace that we would come back in the spring to tour them both. The kids got really excited about riding on another ferry, but were disappointed by the small size. The Bolivar ferry held about 60 cars, and this one only held about 12-15.

As Trevor and I evaluated the "fun factor" of the impromptu trip, we decided that the kids were still a little too young for this sort of outing. They would have had a better time if we had had a drive with a specific destination in mind, an opportunity to stay and enjoy said destination and then a trip home. Although we had a good time, we could see ways that it would have been better. Maybe next year.

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