Sunday, June 26, 2011

The First Annual Shelton Summer Vacation

We decided to take the kids on our first vacation as a family. We have gone on a few extended weekend trips with friends and the big family reunion trip with my whole family, but we had never attempted a solo Shelton family trip. We had the BEST time! The kids were beyond excited to have us all to themselves, and we soaked up plenty of quality time enjoying the water and playing together. Since New Braunfels went so well last year with the Wilhite Family Reunion, we decided that would be a good starting point for us. We rented a cute two bedroom condo right down the street from Schlitterbahn and started the festivities. We got there Sunday afternoon and took it easy the first night. The kids had to share a room so they were having a little trouble falling asleep with no big tiring activity for the day. Hannah ended up having to sleep in the pack-n-play in the bathroom for the first night, because they just couldn't calm down enough to sleep.

We woke up bright and early the Monday morning and hit Schlitterbahn for tons of water park fun! Here are some highlights from our first day. We started off at the Blastenhoff section of the park, and Hannah immediately took to the big slides with no fear. Greyson was more cautious (which is so nice) and decided to hang out with Daddy on the River Rapids ride (kind of like a lazy river but with big waves). We then headed over to the Original Schlitterbahn portion by bus which has tons of great little kid areas. One of Greyson's proudest moments was when lady bug landed on him. He completely loves them, and he was thrilled that this one chose him :-).We came back late in the afternoon, and Hannah passed out for a nice long nap. Mommy was WAY too tired to cook so we went and had the yummiest pizza place. We decided we'd go for the gold and take the kids swimming at the pool at the condos to really wear them out. It worked, and both kids slept in the same room with no problem at all.

We headed back to Schlitterbahn Tuesday morning and decided to start off at the Surfenberg portion of the park to change it up a bit. There is just nothing bad I can say about this place. We LOVED it! They have so many kid friendly attractions and fun things for adults as well. Greyson and Hannah had so much fun playing on the pirate ship and submarine. We ended the day by going back over the Blastenhoff to see if Greyson would give the slides one last try. He saw Hannah go down a few times, and he decided he was finally ready to give it a whirl. He was over the moon happy when he made it, and he played on them for a while after that. We took the kids back swimming and enjoyed more family time before crashing early since we were headed to Sea World in the morning.
Sea World is such a great place, but it was a little more difficult that we had anticipated. It had stormed for the better part of the night so James and I had not gotten much sleep. The kids were cranky and tired so they weren't feeling the whole wait in line and go see shows thing. Once we scrapped that plan all together and high tailed it to the water park, things were GREAT! We have decided that our kids are just so much happier in the water, and that's where we're going focus our efforts in the future. We had lunch at a cute little cafe in the water park and saw a dance show with Shamoo and penguins. Hannah had to get a shot with the penguin, but she thought Shamoo was a bit much. Overall, we had such a great day, and we're ready to go back again soon :-). The Wilhite family reunion is back in New Braunfels so we'll be enjoying the same activities in another month.


Happy Summer, and happy travels!

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