First Family Vacation (Part 1 - Houston)

Sadly the summer has come to and end, but looking back, we had lots of fun and got to do lots of cool stuff. One of the last things we did this summer was go on our first family vacations to bring Trace see the "dolphins and fish," as he would say about the trip, at Sea World.

At the end of July, we loaded up the minivan, I mean Escape, for our trip to Houston and San Antonio.

Trace did well in the car, mostly since he fell asleep before we made it halfway to Lafayette. Actually, even when we were up, he enjoyed the car ride (thanks to toys, markers and suckers).

The first leg of the the trip was to Houston and a couple of nights at Aunt Cookie and Uncle Jim's house. Trace enjoyed swimming in the pool, playing at the park in Aunt Cookie's neighborhood and messing with Zoey and Sandy (Aunt Cookie and Uncle Jim's dogs).

Trace learned the hard way that Zoey doesn't like to share her toys and kept trying to get her to play with him. After a day of playing with the dogs though, we were also reminded the hard way about Trace's bad allergies. (It didn't help that he's rub the dog's noses all over his face and eyes as he tried to hug and kiss on them).

Trace's eyes started swelling up (basically the same reaction that he had with our tree last Christmas). We had gone out to check out Katy Mills mall and their play area, but it was hard to tell how much fun Trace was having with his eyes looks so swollen and sad:

One phone call, actually a few phone calls, to Trace's pediatrician, and we got to talk to Trace's doctor. She knew exactly what was going on and called us in a prescription to calm his allergies down. In the meantime, we enjoyed the activities at Katy Mills, like the carousel, train ride and play area:

Once we got the prescription and started giving him Benadryl, his allergies started clearing up. That night, we brought him to another mall to check out their video game room and carousel, and what do you know, but they had a double decker carousel. Now Trace is pretty smart when it comes to riding these. We'll try to persuade him to get on a certain animal, like the zebra, but he'll see something else, usually a tiger, and want to ride that one. Once the ride is over, he'll remind you about the zebra and want to ride that one too, so he's gets two rides out of the deal. He's already a negotiator.

Here are a few pictures from this mall, notice that I won him a ball out of the claw machine and it only took me $1.50 (for a ball that costs about $0.75). I actually had it on the first try, but just before dropping it into the hole, the claw lots grip on the ball and the machine new it had a sale on it's hands as I had to win that ball.

Houston was a great start to our trip and thanks again to Aunt Cookie and Uncle Jim for taking us in for a couple of days. Now it's off to San Antonio, Sea World and Aunt Robbie and Uncle Dave's house. Check out Part II of the Family Vacation coming soon.