First of all, I would like to thank my sister, Riley, for making our Thanksgiving vacation imaginable, and then making it a great success. It was our first trip that was not a visit to relatives or a hurricane evacuation. We drove about four hours to San Antonio, stayed in a family-friendly Hilton, and spent a day at SeaWorld.
The twins get so loud at night at home that I couldn't imagine staying in a hotel with them. I figured worse come to worse, I would drive them around in the van if necessary. But zipping them into individual tents and putting a DVD on "repeat play" did the trick. There was a lot of quiet singing, but nothing that would disturb anyone.
The first day was a little tough with B., who was very excited about the Christmas tree in the lobby, and did a total flop on the floor and kept "combat crawling" back towards it as I tried to drag him away. When he did get to it, he was very fast about taking glittery ornaments off and chewing on them. My sister was good at quickly child-proofing the hotel room, which mostly meant putting almost everything on top of the TV cabinet. I was happy to find that the Hilton securely bolts all of the artwork to the wall. G. was entertained for a long time by washing his hands in the bathroom sink and even said "Wash hands" over and over to himself. It was only after a while that I realized he was also washing his hands in the toilet bowl.
The big hit, other than Sea World itself, were the outdoor heated pools. Not many people braved them, but we really got our money's worth. At night the hotel lit a bunch of outdoor fire pits and many kids were out there roasting marshmallows (we didn't include the twins on that one). SeaWorld was interesting, uncrowded and pretty well-designed for a family with two giant jogging strollers. They have a huge playground with climbing nets, a pirate ship and big slides. The boys, Dad and my sister loved it, but I have to admit it gave me vertigo. I thought I might have to be rescued off of one of the big nets.
Maybe I'll write more about the vacation later, but I've got to go.
