The Fennell Family: Padre Island Vacation

I'm giving you fair warning ahead of time! This is a long post with tons of pictures! We have had this vacation planned for quite some time and had been so looking forward to some time off! And we finally got to take Maddi to the beach! We went to Padre Island and it was so great! I will say we were slightly worried it would not go over so well because about two weeks before our trip, Maddi was introduced to sand for the first time at a playground down in The Woodlands and was not all that keen on it. However, once we showed her how to dig with sand shovels and gave her a sand bucket we had nothing to worry about! She figured it all out pretty quick!

Our next hurdle then was the water! Again, it took a little while for her to get comfortable with it but once she did, she LOVED it! By the second day, she was a beach lover! And because of this, she learned the word "water." She now says it anytime she sees water when we are driving and every time she says it I remember her at the beach! It is so cute!

We also went to the Texas State Aquarium while we were there which was also a lot of fun for Maddi. She learned "fish" and "turtle." She says so many new words almost daily now it is hard to keep up!

She was also a very good traveler this time around and we were in the car A LOT! Four hours down to The Woodlands on Friday, four hours to Padre on Saturday, four hours back to The Woodlands on Monday, an hour both ways to Houston to see more family on Tuesday, and then four hours back home Wednesday. A LOT of driving! This time, however, we had our handy dandy DVD player to keep her occupied. We watched A LOT of Elmo!! We only had 3 Elmo DVDs in all so needless to say, Moss and I were going a little Elmo batty by the end of the trip. But it was still better than no Elmo, that's for sure! And the first thing on my list today was to go to Target and buy up the rest of the Elmo movies I could find so we would have more options on our next trip! But she rarely fussed in the car at all which was wonderful. But because of all the driving we did, poor Maddi never got to have a regular nap in a crib. All her napping was done in the car which were never good naps. She won't sleep for more than 30- 45 minutes at a time in the car. Her regular naps are close to 2 hours, so needless to say, by the end of the trip she was a little fussy here and there due to lack of sleep. She did great today once I got her back on schedule. Moss was back at work today, but I still have the rest of the week off! Yay!

I have some video of her at the beach, too, which I will try and get uploaded in the next couple of days. I so wish I were back on that beach! It was such a great time and a wonderful memory of Maddi's first beach experience! We will definitely be going next year again, if not sooner!

Our first day at the beach: