Port Aransas

The other day, we were sitting around, bored, during Christmas vacation (who woulda thunk?), and got the brilliant idea to go to the beach to entertain ourselves....in December! The weather was supposed to be really nice, and the drive was only about 4 1/2 hours, so we booked a hotel for a couple of nights, packed our suitcases, and hit the road the next day!

We are so glad we went. We had a blast! When we got there, the weather was in the mid-70s and sunny. The beach was uncrowded, clean, and beautiful. PERFECT!

There were quite a few sandcastles people had built all up and down the beach. We only got a picture of this one, but my favorite was one of a turtle pulling a sleigh behind him.

Maleah loved the sand, and I loved that she had miles of sand to crawl on with (relatively) no hazards. No baby-proofing needed here! However, we did end up with a girl with a belly full of sand at the end of the day. But oh well, a little sand never hurt anyone, right?

Jaimason had a good time testing out the water and running from the waves (his favorite activity!) The water was warm, especially for December. Though we didn't get in, we saw several people swimming in it.That night, we went to a restaurant...and this is what was outside. A very elaborate sand castle. It was incredible!

The next day, we ran into a few snags. When we woke up, despite weather forecasts of mid-70s and sunny, a huge fog had rolled in overnight and hung so thick in the air, it collected on your hair and eyelashes.

BUT....

We weren't going to let that stop us! We rented a beach cart and spent the first half of the day zipping up and down the beach. It wasn't too cold, just really foggy. Jaimason was thrilled when we let him drive the cart.

While we were out, we happened across this awesome little hut someone had made tucked behind hills of sand. The kids had a fun time exploring it...and so did Ben!

We visited the pier and watched the pelicans fish. They were so engrossed in fishing that they didn't care how close we got...so we got really close! Pelicans are fascinating.

The rest of the day was spent building sand castles and "swimming" in the ocean. Jaimason made this sweet alligator head....


and Maleah took a dip in the water.

We also had fun making Jaimason into a merman and Ben into a duck. Oh, how I love sand!
When we returned back to the hotel, we walked into our room and it was about 468 degrees! The air conditioning had malfunctioned and caused the heat to turn on. The air conditioning guy came to fix it and ended up replacing the whole thing. So we're good, right?

WRONG!

That night, it continued to malfunction all through the night (the brand new one!). Needless to say, we didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night. In the middle of the night, the manager brought us the world's biggest industrial fan (which he thought would help). Well, it had the world's biggest industrial noise to go along with it. Luckily, there was another fan to use that was quieter, and we all got some sleep after that.

To make a long story longer, they called us to the front desk and told us they would comp our room for that night! They said the maintenance guy said he was surprised we stayed in the room the previous night because it was so hot. Yay for maintenance guys!

Some other random pictures from our trip: