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Monday, November 16, 2009

Home Sweet Home!

Well, we are back from our trip!! It was fun but kind of crazy. =P It didn't really turn out how we expected, but we had a great time anyway!! (This says a lot, because some of it could have been very frustrating - i think we were just so happy to be on vacation, just the two of us, that we didn't really care! HA!)

So, here are some pics & all the gory details!!


Me & my sweet hubby just before leaving for San Antonio!


Um...yeeeahhhh...haha. I hesitate to show the above pic (& the one just below this paragraph), because i'm pretty sure this is a had to be there thing?! But somehow (& i have no idea how!?) we have started what we are now calling "nose tag" where we try to get the other person's nose with our tongue. The reason it is so hysterically funny (& i swear, i canNOT stop laughing if we start this) is because Brad can get my nose NO MATTER WHAT, but i CAN NEVER EVER get his!!!


Well, this is actually a rare time that i GET HIM! HA!

(You should let me know if i should have kept the above story to myself! HAHAHA!)

ANNNYWAY...

We got on the road & all was well for about 4 hours. FOUR HOURS. Everything was fine. Now, for those of you who do not know, we have recently done a ton of things to my sweet little chevy to make sure it is good to go for a long car trip! It has 4 brand new tires, a recent oil change, a brand new radiator, and...something else i can't even remember! SO we did not expect to have ANY problems. Especially since all that was taken care of a month ago & it has been driving just swell ever since. Well! About 4 hours into the trip, it started overheating. We pulled over, let it cool off, got back on the road & it got hot again. We got off the interstate again & we were looking for a gas station (because we needed gas, not because of the other thing!). Up until then we thought everything would be fine but that we would just have to stop every now & then. However, as we were looking for a gas station, the car started vibrating & stuff - feeling really NOT normal - & we were just kinda saying not-so-great words under our breath & giving each other knowing looks, like "NOT AGAIN!?!?!"

Then, the car died. DIED!

Yep. In the middle of Beaumont Texas. Hubby & I PUSHED THE CAR to this run down gas station. We were like "WHAT NOW?!" I swear, we almost canceled the trip! I would have been so upset. But the hotel was paid & non-refundable (plus they charged you for canceling!) - no sense losing more money! We rented a car & left the little Blazer in the gas station (after getting permission from the gas station owner, Mr. Bill, who was SUPER NICE!! =)

Our rental, a Saturn Vue. We liked it!

So, we got back on the road. Good to go. Now, the second half of our trip was perfect. I drove, since it was getting dark & hubby has a hard time seeing to drive at night. I was not wanting to drive another five hours! We were SO TIRED at this point, because we were stranded for quite awhile before we got back on the road again. We finally got the rental car & had lunch at 2:40, it think. So it was nearly four when we were on the road! It was just a CRAZY day & we couldn't WAIT to get to the hotel.

We FINALLY got there. It was SO NICE. We stayed at The Drury Inn & Suites, and we were both VERY impressed. The price i got (through Orbitz) was the best deal i could find ANYWHERE - including the Holiday Inn, La Quinta, places like that. And it was SOOO NICE. I loved it. The bed was super comfy, there was a huge TV in front of it, a big window overlooking the city, free breakfast buffet, free beverages & snacks from 5:30 - 7:30, free wireless internet, a parking garage, an indoor pool & hot tub, a workout room, etc. VERY NICE. We did not take advantage of NEAR as many of all this as we should have, but i'm just staying, from now on, we will be staying at The Drury Inn & Suites. =)


Our room - but it was way bigger than it seems! We LOVED it!

We were so tired. We went to bed right away!

Saturday was our anniversary day!! =) We planned to go to Six Flags Fiesta Texas all day. We were saving our romantic anniversary dinner for Sunday night because we knew we'd be too tired after Six Flags all day to do anything! Anyway, we couldn't wait to get to six flags! We got up, had our free breakfast & went back to our room to wait until closer to time for Six Flags. (Hours were 11-7 that day.) At 10:15, we left (even though the park was about 5 minutes away). We got there at 10:30 & got in line. Not too many people! I mean, plenty, but not enough to make the lines long & miserable! Plus it was a beautiful day! =)

WOO - HOO!!

Ready for some roller coasters!!

YEAHHHH. So. We wondered if our 30+ selves would be able to handle roller coasters like our teenage selves could &, well, i hate to say it, but...NOT SO MUCH!! HAHA! First, we road one that was super fun (i forgot the name of it). We both liked it a lot! (Line waiting time in November, by the way, is like 5 minutes. Max. Awesome!) It was kind of crazy because we both are fanatics, but hadn't ridden a coaster in, oh, probably 9 or 10 years! But it was fun! So then we went & road "GOLIATH". That one was fun too. It was loopy & crazy & cool. But when we got off, Brad didn't feel too good! He felt like his equilibrium was all knocked off or something. So we sat down to take a rest. I felt fine. And i could have ridden more coasters. But we took a rest for a bit & then realized it was 12:30 & we were starving. So, we went to eat. We chose Johnny Rockets.

Now, first, let me say, that i think amusement parks & movie theatres should not be allowed to charge 4 billion dollars for things like burgers & fries. It is INSANE. If i owned a movie theatre, i swear i would not take advantage of the fact that people WILL BUY SNACKS & use that as a reason to charge, you know, 5 bucks for a piece of candy. I mean, seriously?!? Yeah, Brad & i each got a hamburger & fries, i got a soft drink & Brad got a milkshake. The bill was $34. THIRTY FOUR DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?

We should have thought this through & left, ate somewhere else & came back. Or, if we had known we'd be ready to leave the park at 2 pm, we could have waited & ate after leaving. But somehow we didn't realize any of this till after the fact. So we ate our $34 hamburgers & fries & then walked around the park some more. (i swear, if i owned a park, i would NOT charge people this much money to eat lunch just because i knew people would be hungry!!? There is something seriously wrong about this! But whatever!)

So, as i was saying, we were walking, but then i all of a sudden started feeling REALLY bad. Like, stomach REALLY queasy. It was definitely from the food. So then i didn't think i could do a roller coaster because i was already queasy. I've never in my life gotten motion sickness, but since i was queasy before going on a ride, i didn't think going on another one a good idea. We walked around for a bit hoping the horrible feeling would go away (Brad wasn't feeling too hot either), but around 2, we decided to leave.

We both cannot believe we only road TWO roller coasters!!!!!
& we didn't even get to ride Poltergeist!!! AHHH!

Oh-well.

We went back to the hotel & relaxed. And it was WONDERFUL. For dinner, i ordered takeout from this neat little restaurant i'd seen called "Mimi's Cafe". Brad got their Corn Chowder & i got a Blackened Chicken Salad. It was DELICIOUS! I wish we had a Mimi's.

We also dug into our wedding cake! Yes, we remembered to bring that top layer & dig into it on our anniversary! It was perfectly thawed by the time we cut into it. It was pretty good! REALLY SWEET, though. I only ate about 3 bites. Oh-well. Good enough! Thanks to Brad's mom who stored it for us all YEAR!! (No room in our little bitty freezer!)




Sunday, we relaxed. All day. Well, most of the day. I know we seem boring, but it was a PERFECT day!! We both were really sinusy, so we just wanted to rest, but we had a fabulous wonderful day together. Around 4, we FINALLY got our lazy butts up & got dressed. We had dinner reservations for 7:30 at the Tower of the Americas.

Celebrating 1 year!!

We parked downtown & walked the riverwalk alll the way to the Tower of the Americas. During this walk, we saw The Alamo (though it was closed), which didn't look at all like we expected. It was neat to see. We stopped & pet the horses & considered a carriage ride, but decided against it because we knew dinner would be expensive! (We were thinking a lot about money because, remember, i had a little chevy waiting back in Beaumont that would be needing repairs very soon!)

We WERE going to do the boat ride & i am so very sad that we didn't, but we just didn't have time. We got to the Tower after a nice long walk - & when i say LONG, i mean it! Yeah, there were ohhhh, about 7 or 8 parking garages between the one we parked in & the Tower. HAHA. But, i'm kinda glad because (a) i could use the exercise, and (b) the Riverwalk is a very cool place for a long walk!


Tower of the Americas

I loved the restaurant. Well, partly.The atmosphere was romantic & candlelit. We sat by a window & it overlooked the HUGE city of San Antonio. It rotates on a needle & it was very neat!! HOWEVER - the food was NOT WORTH the price!! Brad got a delicious shrimp parmesan pasta dish & i got steak & mashed potatoes. My favorite thing was the salad that came first. So, i definitely should have had a salad as my meal. I loved the atmosphere, as i said, but the food was just "okay". We both wished we had just gone to a restaurant on the riverwalk. It would have been just as nice & fun & it definitely would have had better food! I'm not saying it was BAD food, it was just far too expensive & not the best i've had (i think if it's that expensive it should be THE BEST!!!) I'm not complaining, it was beautiful & if there is any meal to splurge on, it should be your anniversary meal! But yeah...if we had to do it again, we would have eaten somewhere else!! Oh, well - lesson learned!!

We made our long walk back to the car & headed back to the hotel. But we decided we wanted some ice cream. Now, if you know my hubby at all, you know he HAS TO HAVE Mint Chocolate Chip from Baskin Robbins. But we hadn't seen ANY Baskin Robbins. Cold Stones, however, were EVERYWHERE. We stopped at Cold Stone. He got chocolate ice cream & admitted that it was delicious! =) I got sweet cream with blueberries mixed in. In a waffle cone. Delish!

So, this morning, we were up super early & ready to come back home. Originally we were going to have to have my chevy towed back to Baton Rouge - take a guess how much THAT would have cost us!?!?! But Brad's family looked into UHAUL trailers & found that to rent it for a day cost $72. Yeah, that's several HUNDRED dollars cheaper. So Brad's dad rented one & met us with his truck in Beaumont. They hooked my chevy to that trailer & returned the rental car a day early (we were originally thinking we'd have to drive it back to Baton Rouge & return it on Tuesday. so we saved money by turning it in early). We got the rental car returned & all piled up in my father-in-law's truck! And off we went back to Baton Rouge!! I am so glad we had Brad's daddy to help us with that!! I don't know what we would have done without him! =)

The Blazer is finally loaded up & almost ready to go!


BRR! The wind was blowing like crazy - as you can see from my crazy hair! I was kinda bored here...


They wuz all dirty. Haha.


So we finally made it home & my blazer is at the shop. Thankfully, we are both off tomorrow as well! One more day to relax! (We both refuse to come home from vacation & go back to work the very next day! That is TORTURE! Everyone should have one day of vacation to recover from vacation! Especially THIS vacation! As you can see, it can kinda make you CRAZY. =)



See?

But we did enjoy our trip. Next year, we'll just go to dinner or something. We got to be saving our pennies for a house - & i hate to admit it, but a new car may be necessary in our future. Next vacation might be for our 5th or 10th anniversary! HA!


6 comments:

  1. I am so glad you had a great time! I love the pictures! They make me laugh! I am sorry to hear about your car, hopefully it doesn't cost a fortune! :-)

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  2. I love the nose tag.

    I'm sorry to hear about the car.

    I can't believe how much you paid for your meal! I hope for that price that those burgers and fries tasted well beyond amazing haha.

    You didn't miss too much with the Alamo being closed. I mean it's neat and all but nothing crazy exciting.

    Same with the boat ride. It's cute. It's a fun little thing to do. But if you missed it it's not that big of a deal.

    Hopefully it won't be long before you are telling this story and laughing hysterically at how ridiculous it all went haha. I enjoyed the story and I enjoyed the fact that even though it didn't go to plan that you still had a good time. :)

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  3. PS... this was the longest blog EVER haha.

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  4. Holy cow that was long! :) Sounds like you had SO much fun, you guys are so unbelievably adorable!! Bummer about the car though, but other than that (and the rediculous meal price) everything sounded great! I can't believe you still had your cake, that's awesome. I ate our top when I was pregnant, totally didn't make it the year. :)

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  5. I'm glad you 2 had fun, even with the little hang-ups - that just makes the story more interesting :)

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