South Padre Island

What a great mini-vacation Nathan and I had. I am so thankful we were able to go away for a few days together. We had a great time. I will try and give a short recap. The drive there actually wasn't too bad. It only took us 3.5 hours to get there to our surprise. We both thought it would take between 4 to 4.5 hours. The hotel was a normal hotel. Nothing special about it except the tempra-pedic beds which were wonderful. I would like one of those at home.

We were planning on going back across to the mainland for dinner at Chili's, but there was a huge problem. Or first indication was that there was a stationary line before we even got onto the bridge across. I luckily looked at the bridge to see what was going on and noticed that there was no one moving all the way across the 2-4 mile bridge. We quickly decided we needed to eat on the island. We found a little resturant on the bay side that served sea food. Nathan ate his typical shrimp and I had a not so typical fish taco. It took our food about an hour to get to us, but we were "entertained" by the 75 year old man singing karokie (mostly country). I think Nathan has heard all the country music he can tolerate for the next year or so. It was humourous to hear a man of that age singing and enertaining us, but he was very nice and entusiastic. My dinner turned out well worth the hour wait. Nathan said his was good but not memorable. Our waiter kept apologising for the wait saying they just got slammed. The poor wait staff was running all over trying to serve everyone. I don't think they even realized why there were so many people there. (Remember, no one could get off the island). We actually watched the line on the bridge start to move after about 1.5 hours. It was still backed up after we left.

On Saturday, Nathan and I decided to take lessons to learn how to build sand castles. It was a brilliant idea. We had so much fun learning. Our instructor was great. He was originally from Australia and then England, and had a great accent. He was very energetic, animated, and full of stories. Nathan and I learned a lot and had a great time with him.

Here is Nathan and the castle he built.


Here is the castle I built.


This is the castle the instructor built while teaching us. He said we should stand in front so that everyone would think it was our creation and be impressed, but you know I can't lie.


After our lesson we finally got across the bridge for lunch at Chili's. When we got back we went to play on the beach. Unfortunetly neither of us were smart enough to re apply our sun block and in two hours we did get burnt. I don't understand how I can always remember Brenna's sunblock but seem to forget mine. Anyways, it is mostly on our backs and mine wasn't too bad. Nathan's was a little worse. We are two intellegent adults. We should know better by now.

We had loads of fun playing in the water. The tide was very strong and was very difficult for me to move anywhere, but I did catch a few waves on our new "boogie" board. It has Nemo on it in honor of Brenna. Hopefully she will like it too. After I was thoroughly exhausted, I went in to use my newly learned skill and build a castle. Nathan followed shortly and we built two more castles. (That is where the majority of our back burning occured.)

Anyways, we had a great day together. We had fun learning and eating. It really was just a renewing time for our relationship. We haven't spent time alone and together in a long time. We should try to do it more often.