5 years and South Padre

So, the 27th of January was our 5-year anniversary. Happy Anniversary to us! We pretty much worked all day that day. Once I got home, I made a fabulous dinner (which wasn't finished cooking until about 8:30) and by the time we ate, it was pretty much bed time. So, we decided we would take a 1 day/1 night trip to the beach. We were told South Padre would be good, so that's what I did. I made a reservation to South Padre.

I made this reservation Friday night. After that, I looked up MapQuest to see about how long it would take us to get there. 5 HOURS!!!!! I swear someone told me it was only 3 hours away. And it didn't seem worth it to drive 5 hours Saturday night (Josh was working, so we wouldn't leave until he got home, which was about 5) and then turn around Sunday night and drive back (once again, we both were working on Monday) so I tried to cancel...but since I made the reservation within 24 hours, I couldn't cancel...so we made the trip.

The drive was annoying, but we had a lot of fun! We got to the hotel at about 11:00 and then started watching the movie Salt by about midnight. I fell asleep (because I'm an old lady and have a really hard time staying up late). Then we woke up around 9:00, ordered room service (the food was terrible) and then were checked out by 11:00.

We didn't really have a lot of plans, so we stopped at the visitor's center and looked around at what South Padre Island had to offer.

Here's what we did.

Here's our gross breakfast...they forgot to bring Josh his side of hash browns, so I called down and they promptly brought us a plate of them.

Josh started laughing once he took a bite, and then he said, "What do these look like?" I looked closer and realized that they are french fries cut up. Haha.

Here was a sand castle inside the Visitors' Center

And the back side...

A sea turtle.

Josh's best friend. haha. Josh really loves animals, and anytime one semi-bonds with him, he gets really attached. After we took this picture, we saw that they had lettuce sitting in a pail that you could feed to the turtles, so he would save the lettuce in front of the tank, the turtle would hurry up and swim over there, then he would toss it in the tank and watch the turtle chow down on it. Josh was way too excited about this. :) He ended up feeding the whole pail of lettuce to him, too...which I'm not sure is really what you're supposed to do, but oh well. The turtle enjoyed it!

Here I am with our newfound friend!

See Josh's huge smile in the reflection? He was like a little kid!

We sat and watched this bird for about 30 minutes try to catch fish to eat...he was really close, then a little kid came close and scared the bird away....oh well. Can you tell I'm a little bitter? I was excited to get it on camera. we gave up after that.

While we were watching the bird try to catch fish, we kept seeing these small things scurry all over the ground across the water. We couldn't figure out what they were. Then we looked down below us (we were walking on a raised platform through this place) and saw a million crabs. And every time you would move, then would scurry back into their hole. It was cool to watch.

The alligator. He was so still. And had a wicked-looking grin. He did move at one point, and I was hoping to see him eat something but I think he just wanted to go in the water a little bit to cool off.

Here we are at the beach. We went and bought a kite and lunch and decided we would drive onto the beach and eat our lunch and fly our kite. Josh decided to invite the seagulls to our lunch...apparently they like BBQ-flavored chips.

Here's our new car...did I mention we got a new "family car?" Well, we did. An H3. We love it. The only annoying this is that all I hear out of Josh's mouth these days is, "We should go off-roading. That's what a Hummer is for." And, so, you can guarantee that that's what we did. I did not enjoy it one bit, but he did. We drove it all over the beach, etc. It is dirty, as you can see.

Josh flying our kite. (I wanted the cute kite that had the bows down the tail and everything, but Josh was really into the pirate kite, so that's what we got. haha)