Early on the morning of September 26 we loaded ourselves in the car & set off for the airport. We arrived on time, which was surprising since we only had about 3 hours of sleep. We walk up to our gate, it's looking like we should make it on the flight. Over the loud speakers we hear "is there a American Airlines mechanic on this flight" Mark looks at me smacking his forehead and giving me a here we go look. No mechanic responds, next announcement "Due to a mechanical problems this flight will be cancelled." We wait patiently while other passengers are taken care of. During this time we begin chatting with the flight crew & one of the flight attendants says that this happens all the time and than they will uncancel the flight and you'll end up being on the flight with hardly any other people. We hoped this would happen but came to the realization that most likely we would be hanging out for 5 1/2 hours waiting for the next flight that had room for us. After playing on the moving sidewalk with Noah for awhile we head back to our gate. I smile at the flight attendants as we walk up she give me a huge smile, thumbs up sign and mouths "we're a go" Could have cried with happiness. Entertaining Noah at the airport was becoming a challenge since they took out the play area's to put in express Spa's....not a smart choice Salt Lake, not at all. Happy moment the flight was a go! There was an 8:20 departure that was booked full with passengers, they offered us seats but couldn't place us by each other deciding Noah wouldn't do well not sitting by us we declined the seats and waited for the cancelled flight be uncancelled and us to board. We had seats on the uncancelled flight, there were 11 passengers. This was fantastic, Noah was able to be load and not really bother anyone because there wasn't anyone sitting around us. On American flights first class passengers are always given a meal, there are 16 first class seats. If you are good at math you just realized that there were fewer passengers on the entire plane than there are first class seats, why does this matter? FREE BREAKFAST! They had the meals, they shared the meals with EVERYONE on the plane instead of them just sitting there. Noah thought it was pretty great so did we!
We made our connection in Dallas to McAllen without problem. The best part of the Dallas airport is the train that goes from terminal to terminal, Noah was in heaven and would have spent our entire vacation riding around in circles. Noah was so tired he didn't even make it to the runway in the airplane before he was out cold, Mark & I might have made it to take off. We landed in McAllen called Heather to let her know we were there and wandered out wait for her. I have been to humid places before, but this humidity was different. Mark's Aunt Karin once said that humid air gave you hug each time you walked outside. This air was giving bear hugs & I wanted it to let go :)
After waiting outside for a few minutes the humidity wasn't bad. We loaded up in the car and headed to meet Brett who had just got off work. Starving from a long day of travel we headed for a local Texas BBQ joint, delicious!
Thursday morning we loaded in the car and headed for the gulf, South Padre Island. I love the beach, I have always loved the beach I think I inherited that from my Grandma and Great-Grandma. The Gulf was unlike any beach I had been too. It was WARM, so much better than the cold pacific. We played in the water for hours. Noah never once shivered, this never happens when we swim...not matter how hot it is outside. It was an unusually wavy day in the gulf, which was a blast. Noah loved playing in the waves, he actually spent most of the time not holding hands with anyone. We had a nice picnic in the beach pavilion, they have some very determined birds on South Padre. They actually ripped on a sealed bag of Cheetos, it was a feeding frenzy and a little freaky to be around! After lunch we wandered out on what we decided must have been an old pier. There were lots of people fishing. I was kept freaking out because Noah wanted to walk not holding hands, it was so deep around and the rocks were uneven. He survived but I might need Xanax if he is going to do things like that. Noah got tired of not being able to play in the water around him so we headed back to land. Brett & Heather went out a bit further and were able to see a baby shark someone had caught. We did learn from some nice fishermen, after Noah tried to become the catch in their net, that to catch crab you fish with raw chicken. Who knew, not me! We spent a while longer playing in the waves and than headed out to drive around the island. Noah was awake for all of 5 minutes in the car. We spent time searching for souvenir sweaters, funny since it was over 90 degrees, while Noah slept. We ended our beach day with fresh seafood at Dirty Al's. Noah even loved it, he was downing the calamari. We had calamari, shrimp & flounder. Oh my mouth is watering as I type this. SO GOOD! We stopped at a giant souvenir shop after dinner, sadly it was closed. We took fun photos outside, they are on my phone and I don't want to deal with the transfer. I did give you lots of other photos to see :)
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| Family Photo on South Padre |
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| He wasn't freaking out, promise, he loved it. |
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| See why I was nervous for Noah walking! |
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| Noah fell in love with Heather & Brett right away. |
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| Baby Shark |
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| There open side made me giggle and the painting was to fantastic to not share |
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Wonderful place, can't wait to visit again!
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| Boarder patrol |
Friday we spent the morning at the outlet mall, bad place to visit....especially when you have kids they had way to many kid stores! After a very successful shopping trip we headed for a picnic. Now we didn't just go to any park, we headed to a park on the USA & Mexican boarder. It was interesting watching the boarder patrol speed up and down the Rio Grande while we hate our sandwiches and drive around the park. I imagine they wondered what the heck a bunch of white people were doing picning on the Rio Grande. We could see & hear Mexican children playing not even a football field away. For some reason this entire scenario made me a little sad. Not sure why but it did. After eating and standing on the dock for photo ops we let Noah play at the park. The playground equipment seemed to be new an well take care of as were all the tables, maybe it was just an off day and that is why we were the only people there. Noah had fun playing with his Dad & Brett on the slides and climbing the chain ladder. He did it all by himself multiple times. He is growing up so quickly!
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| This is when Mark got an Ant bite |
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Boarder fence
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Brett took us on a tour around the boarder, at one point while driving down a dirt road we were being followed by the boarder patrol. I won't deny it I was worried we were in trouble. Brett was right we weren't, they turned around and we continued our "tour" We ended up in a small town that I commented looked like what I image Mexico does look like. Brett said it pretty much was and that he had just done a new story (he is an news anchor man) on how this town was trying to get running water.
We finished our day swimming in Brett & Heathers neighborhood pool. This pool was built for kids, it had an entire section just over a foot deep and never got deeper than 3 1/2 feet, Noah was in heaven. He even floated on just his water wings without us holding him, not sure he agreed with us doing that to him but he did it!
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| Love this friend of mine, college roommates 8 years ago! |
Due to flight cancellations we had to be at the airport at 5 am to catch our flight home, we did & made it on our flight.
We had a wonderful trip look forward to many more family trips visiting new places.
Please forgive spelling & grammar errors, in attempt to actually post this before Noah tried to help I was working very fast.
