Our Galveston Vacation

We spent our second week of summer on the beaches of Galveston. The boys LOVE the beach and we always have such a good time. We went again this year with The Whitakers and we had a great time. We have one thing in common with the Whitakers that is very important when vacationing. We both have a lot of kids. We share a kinship that one parents of 4+ share. A parent with only one or two children does things very differently than a parent with more than 3 children. You would think that 4 adults traveling and vacationing with 9 kids would be mass chaos, but instead it works perfectly for us. Their kids are our kids and visa versa for the week. We don't look for our 4 or their 5, we just count heads until we get to 9.

We drove down on Monday. We arrived in Galveston at about 2 or 3. I was really concerned because last time we stayed in a hotel and this time we rented a house. I was really scared that we would get there and it would be a dump or not as close to the beach as we thought. I was pleasantly surprised to get there and see that this was our view from the first deck....

And this picture was taken from the 3rd floor balcony....

The inside of the house was nice too and there was plenty of room for all of us! It was great being off the seawall because it wasn't busy at all and we were usually only sharing the beach with one other family.

Our plan was to cook two nights and go out one. We decided that we would each be responsible for one meal. I decided to grill chicken with some fresh shrimp and crab legs since that is Brock's favorite. The best place to buy the seafood was at the Strand so I decided to go get it for the Whitakers got there so that we could cook. Long story short, it took forever and we didn't end up cooking. Instead we ate hotdogs and took the kids to the beach.



On Tuesday, we got up and made breakfast...pancakes, eggs, biscuits, bacon and then we headed back to the beach! The boys LOVE the beach but Halle, not so much.
Here is a shot of all the kids except the two youngest, Halle and Koen. All of the kids shown LOVE the water. They were so excited for the first full day of beach fun.

It was hard to get pictures of Connor because he liked to go out far in the big waves.
Jaxson liked being out in the big waves, but he went back and forth.

Kaden was very brave and loved to dive into the wave. He didn't care whether he could swim or not.

Halle was not a fan of the beach and enjoyed the sand much more.
We played for 3 or 4 hours and then went back to the house to eat lunch and rest. We all took good naps.
After our nap, we made dinner (which no one really ate because we weren't real hungry yet and we were too excited to go back to the beach) and were back at the beach.

Like I said, Halle did not like the beach and cried for the first 10 minutes each time we went to the beach...but doesn't she look cute?
On Wednesday, we did pretty much the same. We ate breakfast and then off to the beach we went. After the beach, we went home, ate lunch and rested for a little while. Then we went to the Strand to go to the souvenir shop and to get some pictures of our families on the beach.



Then we made one more run to the beach. It was getting dark fast but there was a full moon so we had some light...it was beautiful!