Our 24 Hour Vacation

We didn't have a chance to go on a vacation this Summer, so we went on a little mini-vacation to Galveston Island, TX for a whole 24 hours. Ha!

It only takes about an hour to get there from where we live.
The girls were so excited because they have never been to a hotel before.
Morgan has a client who owns several hotels on the island and he offered to let us stay at his hotel, free of charge! I am so incredibly greatful for that!
We even had an ocean view!

This was our bedroom:

And the girl's adjoining bedroom. Talk about super nice! He even let us bring our doggie, Bella, even though they don't normally allow pets.

Kaylee and her friends trying out the bed:

We got there around 1pm on Saturday, checked into the hotel, and then went to eat lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. Then we went to Walmart to buy some sand toys and drinks.

You can still see effects of Hurricane Ike all over the island, even almost a year later. This is the entrance to the Flagship Hotel. The road that connects it to the main road completely collapsed and it is no longer in business.

As we were getting ready to hit the beach, I caught Lily checking herself out in the mirror. LOL!

The girls loved the beach. This was their first time to go play at the beach. Even Lily loved the water, which surprised me because she won't even get into her Grandma's swimming pool.

We went the the beach where Morgan's client's house is. Talk about a super neat house! It got damaged from the storm and it still hasn't been fixed because they won't give anyone permits to fix anything.

The girls were really excited to build a sandcastle and look for seashells.

Here's the finished product......a sandcastle with seashell and seaweed decor. :)

I was cracking up at our chihuahua, Bella. We took her in her little carrier, but Morgan let her get in the water. At first, she was being all prissy. Then, she started playing and rolling around in the water. Needless to say, she had to have a bath afterwards.

Here's Lily making herself comfortable in the water.

I took some bread so we could feed the birds. This looks so beautiful, huh?! Well, not so beautiful when there's about 20 of them hovering above your head. LOL! Lily and Kaylee had a blast feeding them though. They thought it was so neat how they would catch the bread in the air. Kaylee just laughed and laughed. Then, the birds got too close and the girls had enough of that!

After playing at the beach, we all got cleaned up to go out to eat. Again, Morgan's client was so nice to us. He had left us a gift card to a really nice restaurant. I don't know how I will ever thank him for being so wonderful to us.

We got back pretty late and the girls were ready for bed. Lily is wearing Madison's eye cover thing. Ha!

The next morning, we had the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, which was good. We were going to go to Moody Gardens, which is an aquarium/IMAX/rainforest type place, but then we realized we had to check out of the hotel by 11am. We weren't thinking about the fact that we had Bella with us and had no place to keep her, so we really couldn't go anywhere at that point. We didn't want to overstay our welcome at the hotel, so we decided just to drive to a local souvenir place to get the girls some t-shirts and things.

Then, we decided to ride the ferry across from Galveston Island to Boliver Peninsula.

Okay, you know I can't have a post without telling you something really cool that the Lord did, right?!! You're gonna love this story.

So, most of you know I get really anxious to travel. Well, I drove to Galveston and did fine. I listened to my favorite music. You know Third Day's song, "Born Again", that I talked about on my post the other day? Well, I realized it was on my CD that I have, so I listened to it. Then I listened to their other song, "Call my Name" too. I normally cannot ride with anyone, because it makes me too nervous, but once we got to Galveston, I let Morgan drive because he knows his way around the island. So, I did fine the whole time we were there, until we got in line for the ferry and it was really long. That was when I started to get that dreaded panicky feeling. The one where I seriously started to consider jumping out of the car just so I could breathe.

Well, I had already told myself that I was NOT going to ruin this for the girls. So, that song popped into my head. "Just call my name and I'll be there." So I did. I prayed to the Lord, "Okay, I'm calling your name!" I started to feel better. I knew I'd be fine when I saw they had 2 ferries running and it wouldn't take as long as I thought.


So, we load up on the ferry, get out and I decide to take some pictures. I handed the camera to Morgan and asked him to take a picture of me and the girls. So he did, and then a lady turned around and said, "Do you want me to take a picture of all of you?" and I said, "Sure!" so she took a couple of pictures of us.

But, here's where the story gets really good!!!

You will never, ever guess what kind of shirt she was wearing!

She was wearing a Third Day shirt!

Oh my goodness..........can you even believe that? After thinking of that song by Third Day, "Just call my name and I'll be there!" and this lady shows up wearing a Third Day shirt!

I just don't know how you could possibly say that was a coincidence. I just cannot make this stuff up! Right when it happened, I didn't think much about it. Then, after we got back in the car and I realized how significant that was, I was just so amazed! That the Lord would do that for me? ME? That is just how much He loves us, isn't it?!


The girls were also SO excited that they got to see dolphins in the water!

Then, we reached Boliver Peninsula. We call going through Bolivar the back way to go back home. It leads to Interstate 10, which leads us back home. This area (Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Rollover Pass) was the hardest hit by Hurricane Ike though. It was so devestating to the area because houses were lifted off their pilings and swept away by the water. These houses were on stilts and that didn't even help because the storm surge was so high. You can google the before and after arial shots of these areas and you will be amazed at how over half the houses are no longer even there.


Here's just one example of the damage.

So, that was our little trip! I guess it was the quickest vacation ever, but we had a great time!