Eastern Visitors

We had additional visitors last week, as Uncle Ted and Aunt Rachel came by for a visit.  They flew into San Antonio to visit Rachel’s brother, and decided to drive down to the coast to see us while they were that close.  We did our best to entertain them, and the boys did their best to drive them crazy (as they always do), but it’s all in good fun.  We went to the beach (of course), and saw a few other Corpus Christi related things over the weekend.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take many pictures for some reason.  But here are a couple of Ted with the boys.

It was good seeing them, as Rachel had never met Nolan and Ted hadn’t seen him since about day one.  And the other boys are always thrilled to hang out with them.  We’re sure they’ll be back!

Northern Visitors

We haven’t posted in quite a while, mostly due to the fact that we had visitors for a couple weeks.  Grandpa Jim and Grandma Cindy were here for two weeks at the start of the month.  We hit the beach more than a few times, and saw a lot of the other sites the city has to offer.  Check it out:

It'd been more than eight months, so you can imagine how much the boys had grown since they'd last seen them... oh yeah, and the third one wasn't even around back then! 

Boys on the beach, as always.

Looking for lost treasure at Padre Island National Seashore... or miniature sharks, I guess.

Typical Nolan...

And more typical Nolan...

This one wasn't the youngest grandchild for very long!

 Grandpa Jim and his castle building assistants.

And we went downtown Corpus Christi to check out the locals for the annual Buc Days Parade!  Longest... parade... ever.  After two hours we finally decided to head out.  But overall it was another great visit!  Anybody else who wants to come on down to the beach, just let us know!

Festival of Sand...

It’s been quite a while now, but sometime a few weeks ago we went to Sand Fest up in Port Aransas, an annual festival of sand sculptors carving out pretty impressive designs in the sand.  They had a handful of professionals and a lot of amateurs making all kinds of castles, mermaids, and sea creatures out of sand… and there were tons and tons of people.  The parking got so out of control that by the time we got back to our car, about twenty people had double-parked us in.  So we just had to sit around and wait until those wonderful people came back and decided to move for us.  Awesome.  But the event was cool, and probably something we’ll go back to.  It was pretty impressive what some of the artists were able to do.  The boys and I are already practicing for next year's contest! 

Other than that, things have been beautiful on the sunny Gulf Coast.  Been spending a lot of time at the water, but what else would you expect?

Life on the Beach

So our new favorite place in Texas is the Rockport Beach Park.  It’s only about fifteen or twenty minutes up the road, and the park is beautiful.  Palm trees, sand, and clear warm water… what else could you need?  The water is shallow for a long way out off the shore and doesn’t really have waves, so it’s perfect for the kids.  Apparently they groom the beach in the mornings, and there are plenty of picnic tables and shade tiki-umbrella-type things to get out of the sun.  So we’ve gone up a couple times already and I’m sure we’ll be up there quite a bit this summer.  Here are some pics of the boys enjoying the beach!

The water boy.  Thinks he's pretty funny with a bucket of water to throw on my back while I'm not looking.  I guess I started it though.

 Why so serious?

There we go!  That's the Nolan we know.

And this one could sit here and do this all day without complaining.  Not going into or near the water quite yet, but the sand he loves.