Yes, you read that correctly. We got an entire week’s vacation this year. We dropped Cody at the kennel in Hutto & headed out of Austin last Tuesday morning. We got to South Padre a little before 6 that night & went to the brewery. :) Beer was great as usual, but the service was crap. We go there every year on our first night & we know we’ll be back. The particular waitress that we had that day was awful & I noticed a man at a table close to us that was having problems with her as well. I wanted to go guy her a box a q-tips & tell her to clean out her ears. The food was still good & we filled our growlers up to go so we had plenty of beer for the rest of the week. Actually, Erik still has a growler of his Speckled Trout Stout in the fridge. We didn’t do much that night. Erik set up the wireless router for us to use & Evan & I went over to Port Isabel to the store.
I don’t really remember the day by day breakdown like I did last year. Lots of awesome seafood, lots of beach time (without having to share it very much) & lots of relaxing. I think I read 6 books while we were there. :)
We tried a couple of new restaurants this year as well. Pelican Station in Port Isabel was wonderful & the boys both ate calimari with us & Ethan even ate some of Erik’s grilled tuna steak. It was wonderful. The food & the boys’ mood. The last night there we went to The Big Donkey. Funny name, but good Mexican & hell when you’re that close to the border why not throw some Mexican food into the mix. We had one bad experience & honestly it was so bad that we won’t go back. It was Thursday or Friday night & we went over to Pirate’s Landing in Port Isabel. We’ve been there every year & normally it’s good food. This year we had a problem from our first moment with the waitress. Erik asked her what beer they had on draft & in the list, she included one that we hadn’t heard of. So Erik asked what kind it was & she said it’s dark. So he says okay, is it a stout a lager, what? She was clueless. Didn’t even know what he was asking. He gave up at that point. So we get our drinks & it’s time to order our food. I ask what the specials are because the year before last they had an awesome deal on fried shrimp (yeah I’m a junkie). She didn’t know. She told me that she’d have to check. So she walks away & then comes back a few minutes later & says that there isn’t one. Okay, you don’t have to be a genius to remember if there’s not a special. Anyway, I wish I could say that that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. Erik had ordered blankened flounder with pontchartrain sauce. So out comes our meal… with no sauce! We actually ended up having to ask the manager for it (who was walking through the dining room) since we still didn’t have it several minutes later. We finished our dinner & didn’t even think about dessert. The Godiva cheesecake sounded good, but not enough to suffer through anymore of that place. We had dinner several times at Daddy’s again this year & the boys enjoyed eating the fried crawfish with us.
I got to go back to my favorite toe ring store & loved it as usual. I had a really nice chat with the owner (last year it was the wife, this year the hubby). Found out the DL on a few local places. He calls the restaurant where we had the awful experience Disney Land. LOL.
Anyway, we had a wonderful trip. The boys were really good… super hyper, but good. They slept in twin beds in a room by themselves & managed to stay out of trouble even then. Granted, Erik told Ethan that he could do whatever was necessary to ensure that Evan didn’t touch anything to do with the TV, but we don’t know if he had to assert his temporary authority or not. On our last day at the beach the water was beautiful & warm (okay there was a ton of sargassum too, but still). Anyway, both of the boys FINALLY decided that they liked the water! HOORAY!! I guess that’s enough about our trip. None of us were ready to come home yesterday & Mr. Erik (Smarty Pants) took today off so that he could sleep in. I went back to work & dreamed about catching up on sleep all day. So now, it’s off to bed for me.
Here’s the link to all the pics. I believe Erik has a few pics on his phone (I know several of the the boys running off some excess energy on the hill by the lighthouse), but I’ll have to add those later.
