Port A Family Trip

Cody and I were originally planning to do a weekend away just us before having Nora, and then decided we wanted to do a family trip with Owen because we realized we hadn't yet done a trip just us three, and well this would be our last chance before we grow to four.  So we decided to go to Port A for a weekend with Owen and take him to the beach for the first time.  Our trip was wonderful and I am SO glad we ended up doing exactly what we did.

Lunch stop on the way in at Hester's Cafe inside the art museum.
Owen LOVED seeing the "Big wa-wa!" and the boats! 

Before going at a doctor's appointment, I figured I'd ask just to make sure that this was fine.  I really didn't expect any problem and maybe thought I'd just hear that I needed to be careful and not overdo it blah blah.  I was going to be around 35 1/2 weeks pregnant when we had planned our trip.  To my surprise I was told that I could have as much fun as I wanted at a beach as long as it was within an hour of San Antonio.  They said I should not travel farther than an hour away at 35 weeks, which I didn't expect to hear at all.  Well... there is no beach within an hour. Cody and I discussed it a lot and I talked about it with friends and we decided it was extremely unlikely that I would go into early labor and it'd be a problem, especially since I went the full 40 weeks with Owen.  However, to be on the safe side still, we bumped our trip up a week to technically go while I was 34 weeks pregnant, and arriving back home at 35 weeks.  Talk about getting technical.  I am a technical person though so this made me feel a little better.  Also we knew the odds were nothing would happen, and if we canceled our trip and indeed nothing happened, we would have been extremely bummed.  So we went in March over Easter weekend at 34 1/2 weeks and obviously as we're still trucking along, nothing happened and it went perfectly.

34 Weeks the beach!

34 Weeks at the beach!

Cody loved these pictures!  He had written Owen and Nora in the sand, and Owen fairly quickly took his bucket of water over and managed to only dump the water over Nora's name. It was pretty funny.

We rented a condo and went to the beach two days and went to the aquarium in Corpus another day.  The only thing that might have been better about our trip was if it had been slightly warmer.  I was kind of chilly on the beach, not exactly cold, but also not at all warm.  I mostly kept a towel wrapped around my shoulders and that helped me feel fine.  I think Owen was occasionally cold as well.  It also wasn't sunny - which would have helped it be a little warmer obviously.

Simply dumping the water out was probably his favorite activity.  -Followed by instantly requesting "More wa-wa!"

I definitely loved watching these two together.  Cody is such a great dad : ) 

Seeing Owen experience the beach for the first time was awesome.  Cody and I loved simply planning this trip around him having fun and new experiences.  He did not like the waves and water but loved the sand and digging and filling his buckets and pouring the water out of his bucket repeatedly.  Cody was pretty much on nonstop bucket refilling duty.  No sooner than Cody would hand Owen a bucket of water, then Owen would gleefully dump it out, and hand it back to Cody saying "more wa-wa please!"  It was pretty cute - especially since I mainly wasn't the one running back and forth from the water to our spot in the sand.

We also enjoyed a trip to the pool.  Owen was hesitant at first but eventually had fun being thrown in the air by Cody and then "swimming" back and forth between the two of us.

We also brought Owen's Easter present from us which was a water table.  So there were a couple times that I napped and Cody read a book on the condo porch while Owen thoroughly enjoyed playing with the water table.  It was a win-win-win for all.

We did celebrate Easter while on our coast weekend.  We brought our Easter eggs filled with stickers and a few teddy graham treats and hid them around the condo living room.  Owen enjoyed finding them and got excited about each egg with the stickers and treats.  The stickers were monkeys with bananas and trucks and he repeatedly stuck most of them onto the same exact spot on his shirt.  It was funny and cute as the pile of stickers mounted on his chest.  He also very sweetly offered Nora some stickers without any prompting!  He occasionally came up to me and put a few on my stomach for Nora.  It was adorable : )  We also brought and read some new Easter books for Owen.

Finding the eggs. 

He discovered the eggs had surprises inside of them!

Finding all the stickers and treats.

Reading about Easter with Dada.

You can't see Owen's shirt to well, but there is a VERY thick stack of stickers on his chest.  However he also sweetly gave Nora some stickers on my tummy : )

We did our trip to the aquarium on the coldest day and it turned out great.  I was definitely overdone by the end, but Owen enjoyed it and it was fun to see him learning about new animals.  Our favorite part was in the dolphin room where you are on the side of the tank and the dolphins were repeatedly swimming around and around.  At one point we were the only ones in that room and Owen went to one side of the glass wall and when the dolphins swam by he would run and chase after them, and then as they would circle off to come back around he would say "bye-bye!" and go back to get ready to chase them again.  It was completely precious.

Owen running and chasing the dolphins as they swam by was so adorable and our favorite part of the aquarium trip.

It really was a fantastic trip and I'm so grateful we had that time just us three before our family transitions to a new chapter.  Overall it went great and everything went well.  There were a lot of times I was worn out and exhausted but Cody was a huge help and often did pretty much everything.  He was concerned before going because in the weeks before this trip was when my back started having a lot of pain and I started reaching the exhausted point again.  A funny moment was the first full day when we were walking to the beach.  Cody had clearly stated his concern about how I would hold up and I insisted I'd make it and wanted to do this trip.  That first walk to the beach I started to get light headed and worn out and I did not want to let Cody be right! I tried to push through but I just couldn't. (Mind you, sadly it wasn't that far of a walk either... it was kind of embarrassing.) We reached a point on the boardwalk where I told Cody to keep going with Owen and I had to sit down on a bench.  However I was still pretty light headed and felt like I was going to pass out even after sitting, so then I reluctantly laid down and stretched out as best I could on this sandy bench and I prayed nobody would walk by while I was recovering there.  I knew Cody could see me from the spot he was setting up on the beach and I knew exactly what he was thinking.  I finally felt well enough to continue and join them and thankfully I didn't have to repeat that process on the way to or from the beach again.

Post needing to lay down on a bench on the boardwalk, I did still have to lay down briefly once I reached the beach.  Thankfully the other days were better.