Well, we’re back from San Antonio, war wounds in tow, but what a cracking weekend we had!

After our party on Friday night, I thought it’d take all day to get the boys up and attem – this was one time I was glad to be proved wrong, they got up at 7.30 nice and early.  They did, however, take forever to get ready and after introducing Rowan to Ihop (he preferred Dennys) for breakfast we headed on our merry way to San Antonio.

En route, as always, we stopped at Bucees for a few supplies, but mainly to show Rowan the fabulous restrooms! LOL! If you’ve never heard of Bucees this will all sound quite bizarre, but I assure you I’ve no lost the plot.  We drove straight to the hotel where we checked in, dumped our bags and it was straight out to the San Marcos outlets for an afternoon of shopping.

We arrived at 4.20pm and left at 8.20pm – in those 4 hours we did a lot of damage!

The boys did Nike, Tommy and Aero, I did Carters baby store, Lane Bryant, Yankee Candle and Bath and Body works – lol!

What a combo of stores! (I also got a few things in Aero and Tommy with them! LOL!).

Does anyone else have a ‘slim in to’ section in their wardrobe? I see things I love and buy them in the size I can get them in at the time and sit them in a ‘to slim into’ pile in the cupboard.  I have about 6 tops that I’m slimming in to – and for at least one of them, I’m nearly there!

I love the outlets, it’s a great place to take care of Christmas shopping (I finished my sister’s Christmas present) and for my wedding bits and bobs that I needed to pick up!

Sunday morning was an early one, we got up and had breakfast in the hotel, showers all round and went to Target to pick up some more sunscreen as we’d already used one of the spray cans I’d brought with me and that left 1 tube of sunscreen – which I knew wouldn’t be enough.

After the sunscreen stock up, we headed to Six Flags theme park.

While waiting in the queue to buy tickets a guy comes up to us and offers us tickets.  Being naturally suspicious of people trying to sell tickets at places like that we were a little cautious but the guy explained that his company had arranged a picnic but he had season passes to the park and was left with double tickets.

He wouldn’t take a dime for them either! So, we started the day off with free tickets into the park saving us $150!

Once we were in, we decided to break Rowan in gently and encouraged him to go on his first ever rollercoaster (I’m still kicking myself I didn’t buy the photo when we got off as his face was priceless!).

After the Road Runner Express rollercoaster (which was a little less ‘tame’ than we thought it was going to be) we tried our hand at our first water ride, the Gully Washer.

When we were done on the Gully Washer we did a few more rides, Col did the Superman Rollercoaster on his own while I waited with Rowan – which I later regretted cause Col said it was a class ride, and we did a few bits and bobs in the water park – discovering that the boys needed to buy sandals for the rest of the trip.

By the end of the day, we were exhausted, so we picked up a Macaroni Grill to go order for dinner and ate in our hotel room.

We then ventured down to the hotel pool and hot tub for a while before Col and I taught Rowan how to play Dominoes.

Monday was another early morning, we had breakfast and headed back to Ross and Target for the boys to pick up some cheap sandals.  While we were in Ross I found my Sketchers flip flops and picked up a couple pairs as I haven’t found them in Sugar Land since that first pair I bought ages ago – which are now starting to wear out on the soles!

Sea World was on the agenda for today and boy did we have a blast! It was my favourite park and I really took it all in my stride.

A few years ago I went to Florida with Col and the in-laws and it was tough.  The plane ride screwed my back, so from the get-go I was sore and my mobility was limited.  Secondly, I might have been to the US a lot, however, every time/state I’ve gone to had been in the Winter – so lots of snow, no humidity or sunshine.  Florida knocked me on my ass.  I’ve never felt anything like it in my life.  I was maybe a little lighter than I am now, grossly unfit and I felt every step.  I was hot, exhausted extremely quickly and hid from the sun – not to mention complained a lot.

This time, I showed that park who was boss! Although it was hot hell and the sun kicked our asses, I did so much better.  The water aerobics and dieting has really helped my stamina and I kept up with the boys all day – I even surprised them with how fast I was able to make it to the last show we wanted to see.

Col commented on how well I did in the park – and I even managed to avoid getting sunburnt, my 3rd day in a row, which really is a turn up for the books since I cook just looking at the sun!

Sea World ROCKED though, it was definitely my favourite park.  I loved it in Florida too.  It has a theme park with rides, a water park and all of the shows and animal displays too – it’s got it all.

Col told me he’d never, in all his years of doing theme parks, done a park so completely.  Which was kinda cool to hear.  We saw Believe (with Shamu!), Azul (new this year), The Cannery Row Caper (Sea Lions), Cool Vibrations (stunt show on the water) and Sea Lions tonight (special evening show of the Sea Lions making fun of all the other shows in Sea World).

We saw the Flamingoes, Penguins and Gator exhibits and we played in the games boardwalk for ages (and won 4 different soft toys playing games against each other!).

Rides wise, we did the lazy river and a water ride in the Water park and in the Theme park itself, we all did the Rio Loco water ride (and timed it perfectly so we had a 10 minute wait and by the time we got off the ride the wait was up to 2 hours again!) and Col and I did the Great White ‘coaster (again, a wait time of only 5-10 minutes).  We had planned on doing some of the others but they closed as soon as a thunderstorm hit so we couldn’t do any more!

We packed so much in to one day, it was fantastic!

Once the storm hit, we took shelter in the games boardwalk but after a while, we had to run through the park in the rain (we waited for it to die down a little) and made it to the car relatively unscathed.

On the way home Col spotted a Ghengis Grill and pulled off the road for us to have dinner.  He was so excited! lol! Then it was back to the hotel – where the boys ended up ordering a midnight pizza!

Tuesday was when all the damage was done – no pictures of the day online, I do have 2 pics I got printed that I’ll have to scan but they ain’t pretty! LOL!

Today we were at Schlitterbahn Water Park, probably my least favourite of all the parks simply because it is 3 different locations (you need to take a bus between no.1 and 2/3), grossly disorganised and poorly laid out.  There are no directions, you can’t carry a damn thing with you, you have to pay $9 per locker which you can barely fit a shoe in and if you travel between the park locations you either have to abandon your stuff in the locker you bought at your first location, or, pay for lockers in the new location too!

Anyway, we did manage to do a few things, we started in the original Schlitterbahn location, where we all did the double loop body slide.  At the bottom of it when you come out and land in water I just about died.

After that we decided the rides were too packed and to try one of the other parks instead.  So, we went to park no.2, Col and I did the Dragons Revenge ride – which is the ride that absolutely destroyed my butt and has left me in agony ever since.  We waited in line for a half hour for the Family Blaster ride which turned out to be an overwhelming disappointment and quite the waste of time (and again hurt my butt!).

After that, we tried to walk to the river to get a tube and float to the next park – only, turns out that it’s not part of the park, so even though it’s on the Schlitterbahn map, you can’t do it with Schlitterbahn – which made me hugely angry cause we’d walked for ages, barefoot on crappy ground to get there and had to turn around and go right back!

In the last park, we did the Torrent river which rocked – we spent pretty much all of our time here before heading back to the first park where we all went on a tube chute, which finished off my time in the theme park cause it gave my butt another bloody pounding and put me out of commission.

The boys on the other hand went on another ride, I waited at the bottom of it for them.  What we didn’t know was that the ride split off into 2 ‘endings’ and the staff get to choose which ending you get sent down. Of course, as luck would have it, they got sent down the ending which wasn’t where I was and which led them into the river – where they got stuck bobbing around for ages – with no suncream!

When we eventually found each other again, the boys decided to do another ride or two while I just milled around the shops and got myself organised (and bought two of the pictures we’d had taken during the day!).

On the way home we stopped for dinner at Chilis cause we’d skipped lunch (again) and we quickly discovered that the boys had been absolutely cooked alive and had angry red patches of sunburn, pretty much all over.  Col had radioactive feet, Rowan’s back looked beetroot.

The trip home was pretty short, we stopped in Bucees (of course!) for Col’s coffee and from there it was less than 2 hours home.

We passed the time on our way home singing rather loudly, a variety of songs in a rather ‘thrown together’ play list that I created a while back when we were in Manchester.

We got home at 11.30pm, I did my unpacking (as I always do!), simultaneously did 4 lots of laundry and loaded all of our trip photos to facebook – and discovered that I too had been struck by sunburn.  Not nearly as bad as usual, or the boys, but a little here and there!

It was a wonderful trip, we all had a blast and sunburn and war wounds (aka – sore ass and friction burns from the tube) aside and Rowan was just in awe of the entire theme park culture here.  It was certainly great times for all and as always none of us wanted to come back to reality, especially Col with his sunburn – poor guy!

Tonight, we greet Man Utd in Reliant Stadium, so, until next time (which will probably be tomorrow at this rate as we’re cramming so much into every day! LOL!)…