Galveston Getaway

In late June, just before Jason had his week-long intensive class in St. Louis, our family took a quick getaway trip to Galveston. A wonderfully generous member from our church offered their beach home/condo to us for the weekend. Our original plan to stay for two nights was shortened to just one night when Jaden unfortunately contracted strep right before we left. Thankfully, Jaden's health improved with antibiotics, and we didn't have to cancel the trip altogether.

We loved the use of our friends' condo as an easy spot for mealtimes and rest times during the day.

Every other time our family has visited Galveston, we've only gone for a day trip, so the main focus of our visits has always been time on the beach. Now that we had an opportunity to stay longer, we were excited to explore more of Galveston. We ended up getting an annual membership to a popular tourist attraction called Moody Gardens. We only explored about half of what Moody Gardens has to offer on this trip, but we loved all that we saw! And with our annual membership, we plan to return again soon. Our first stop at Moody Gardens was the Dinos Alive exhibit.

The tent was full of very realistic dinosaur animatrons. 

The animatrons were so realistic in fact, that poor Adley was quite frightened of the creatures! Good thing she had her daddy to protect her! :)

Here's an example of what we saw in the exhibit.

At the very end of the exhibit, our kids had a chance to "dig" for dinosaur bones or fossils.

Our next stop was to the Aquarium Pyramid. We loved seeing a variety of ocean animals.

This seahorse was surrounded by very, very tiny seahorse babies.

Jaden and Cody were most excited about seeing the sharks.

Another cool spot, though, was the sting ray touch tank. It wasn't easy to be patient and wait for the sting ray to swim within a reachable distance...

...but the wait was worth it when the boys finally were successful! How cool to actually touch a sting-ray! We learned that they aren't as intimidated if we touch them just with two fingers.

Another highlight of Moody Gardens on Day 1 was seeing the 4D movie on sharks. We all even got a little wet during this IMAX show!

After lunch and naptime back at the condo, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at Palm Beach-- Moody Garden's water park. The boys LOVED going on their first-ever water slides, floating in the wave pool, and relaxing along the lazy river. I didn't get any pictures of our family at this area since I didn't want to worry about finding a spot to stash my camera. This part of Moody Gardens was probably the boys' favorite, though!

The next day, we spent the entire morning at the beach. Last time we visited the beach with Adley, she was just starting to crawl and was attempting to eat all the sand. What a different experience she had this time! Adley just loved walking into the water and feeling the waves crash onto her. She was even a fan of digging in the mud-- and this time she only ate a little! :)

Cody and Jaden enjoyed their usual-- running into and jumping over the waves, swimming in the water, making sand castles, using water squirters on each other, and playing with sand toys. They always love time at the beach and could easily spend hours at a time there!

We ended our beach time with a picnic lunch-- yum!

God gave us such a beautiful day for a beach visit!

Before heading back home, we spent a couple more hours at Moody Gardens. This time, we explored the rotating exhibit at the hands-on discovery museum, currently The Science of Music. The museum wasn't very large, but some highlights included talking with each other through this long whisper-tube (and seeing each other on the TV screen!),

playing piano,

...and changing our voices to sound like chipmunks, Darth Vader, and other crazy-sounding characters. This last spot got the biggest laughs from the boys!

Our final Moody Gardens stop was going to the SpongeBob Underwater Adventure-- basically just an interactive movie loosely teaching kids about sea-life. Cody was actually chosen to be one of the "button-pushers" for the show. This meant that our family got seats right up front! Cody's job, along with two other kids, was to (you guessed it!) push a button any time it lit up along SpongeBob's journey. The buttons would often cause streams of bubbles to go out of the submarine, direct the sub along a new path, or fire various sea weapons. The kids in the audience got to decide where SpongeBob and Patrick would travel to along the way. Cody loved being a part of the action, and both boys seemed to think the show was just hilarious!

We loved the chance to spend time together as a family and to experience a new part of Galveston on this trip. We look forward to more Moody Gardens adventures to come this year!