Houston, Vacation Day 5

Our one full day in Houston was full of adventure.  Even though it continued to rain, we kept right on going with the fun we had planned.  In the morning, we visited the Houston Fire Museum.  It was probably Quinn's favorite place that we went in Houston.  He had a great time dressing up as a fireman and pretending to drive the fire truck.  Mia did a pretty impressive job of sliding down the fireman's pole.  When we left, we headed to lunch at a place called Natachee's Supper 'n Punch.  The food was delicious, and the kids' lunches were served in vintage metal lunch boxes.  So fun!  That afternoon we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  There were lots of dinosaurs for Quinn to examine, and Mia liked all of the mummies.  Quinn got cranky and fell asleep which ended our time there, but he was a trooper.  He was just exhausted.  We all were, though.  We had been away from home for several days and were ready to go back to Dallas.  We enjoyed our time in Houston.  There are so many fun things for families to do there.  We had a great vacation and love exploring our state!

Houston, Vacation Day 4

We left Tuesday morning to head back toward Dallas, but we stopped in Houston.  We wanted to spend a couple of days exploring the city.  On this day, we visited the Children's Museum of Houston.  It was enormous and amazing.  The kids were in awe and didn't know where to look first.  They got to be scientists, shop at the grocery store, and Mia climbed a rock wall plus so much more.  It's definitely a placed we'd recommend to families visiting Houston.  After dinner that evening, we ended up at a bookstore which is one of our favorite things.  The kids each got a book at Half Price Books and really enjoyed it even though we go HPB in Dallas often.

Quinn practicing his EMT skills

Learning to be a vet

Galveston Day 3

Day 3 was looking a little rainy, but we headed out to Sea Wolf Park that morning.  They have a retired submarine and destroyer that you can walk through and explore.  Thankfully, they had fans going inside both of them because it was seriously humid.  As we were coming out of the sub, it started to pour down raining.  I wanted to stay in the sub hoping that the rain would let up, but even with the fans, it was getting stuffy.  I put my camera away and braced myself for the rain.  I was pleasantly surprised that it only rained for about five minutes and then stopped.  We went over to tour the destroyer next.  It's hard to believe that people can coexist in such tight quarters as they have on a sub or even a destroyer.  There must have been many short tempers to be in such close proximity to one another for extended periods of time. 

As we were leaving Sea Wolf Park, the rain "came a toad strangler" as my elders used to say.  It was raining so hard because of the tropical storm which by that time was getting close to Galveston.  Fortunately, it let up and only rained off and on the rest of the afternoon.  That was okay because after that I wanted to tour another house anyway, so we were out of the rain.  This day's house was Moody Mansion.  I can not even describe the grandeur of this house.  It is 28,000 square feet.  That's right, there are three zeros in that number.  It was massive.  It was so big that we couldn't even see all of it.  The craftsmanship that went into that house had me awestruck.  It has four stories and was completed in 1895.  I can't believe just one family lived in it.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside which was a pity because I'd love to be able to look back on them down the road. 

We went to The Strand historic district next to walk around.  It's close to where the cruise ships dock, so there are lots of souvenir shops and restaurants.  Our favorite place was La Kings Confectionary.  It was a little overwhelming for our two sweet-toothed children.  When you walk in, there is candy everywhere.  It's just a huge wall of sugar.  Mia and Quinn didn't know where to go or what to look at first.  I'm surprised they didn't start drooling (or maybe they did and I didn't see it).  They decided to fore-go candy in favor of ice cream.  Mia asked to get some rock candy for later and said she would just take it with her.  Yeah, she ate it too before we left the store.  They loved it!

USS Cavalla submarine 

USS Stewart destroyer

Moody Mansion

La Kings Confectionary

 One last walk on the beach since we were leaving the next morning.  Mia had to write her name and Quinn's in the sand before we left.