31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #6—Dip our Feet in the Gulf of Mexico

Helping Dad put on sunscreen.

Ah, Galveston Island. The Gulf of Mexico. A genre of beach far, far different from those of California, Florida, Hawaii; a kind of beach in which most people are at least a little chubby, and ain't nobody is glistening bronze or sporting a washboard stomach. The closest thing to a Galveston Beach is probably a British beach, I'd wager. 

I sort of love Galveston. It's warm, kelpy, and the occasional jellyfish is always washing up on shore looking like a soggy sandwich bag and making moms nervous about curious toddlers tripping over one and getting stung. Flocks of eerie brown pelicans slowly soar just overhead, casting foreboding shadows over the beach, like pterodactyls. It's lovely.

Hollie was pretty nervous about the water. It took a lot of convincing just to get her to put her feet on the sand. Once on the sand, she would only walk on her heels for another 30 minutes. She finally got comfortable with the wet sand, but she didn't ever want to dip her toes in the water.

The middle of a mighty, gleeful shout. Hollie really started to get in touch with her primitive baby self out there on that beach.

Beach babes with Lubbock tan lines.

She might look cute, but it's all a crafty ploy to get you under her spell.

Hollie the Island Native fashioned herself a spear and took off hunting diamondback rattlers. Minutes later, she drove that spear repeatedly into the rattler's head, shouting and cackling. (She later told me she was just making more "eyes.")

Spear-wielding Hollie finds a merman on the beach and demands to know his business. The merman tries to explain that he is trapped until the next day's high tide.

Dissatisfied with that answer, magical sand nymph Hollie cast a spell and turned the merman into a blushing mermaid.

After an hour or two at the beach, we packed up, grabbed some grub at Wendy's, and made our way to the Moody Gardens where we dropped a fortune for tickets to the Rain Forest Pyramid, which promised us adventures worthy of Swiss Family Robinson. Hollie was close to needing a nap, and she manifested this not so much by being fussy but by being belligerent. In other words, we pushed around a babyless stroller while helplessly chasing after her in a nature area in which monkeys and sloths and birds (oh my!) roam freely, and babies can find themselves in whole heaps of trouble if they aren't carefully watched.

Spotting monarchs in the butterfly pavilion.

Much of our zoo photos consist of David holding Hollie and Hollie pointing. In the above shot, Hollie is pointing at a butterfly she found herself face-to-face with. The below shot is almost identical, except that Hollie somehow found herself face-to-face with—a MONKEY! These little guys occasionally decide to swing down from the trees and vines and greet people up close and personal. The rainforest ranger was hard at work keeping people from making fast movements or doing anything else that might provoke a monkey attack.

After Hollie and the monkey had this primate exchange, the monkey hopped down, walked over and stood next to David for a minute, and then basically brushed right past his leg to the other side of the walkway. I held my breath the entire time, trying to at least take pictures of what might be the last time I ever saw my pre-monkey-mauled family. Fortunately, my husband and daughter only exude friendly primate signals to other monkeys. We escaped unscathed.

Hollie's face-to-face encounter with a white-faced monkey.

The monkey making his way toward David. 

The monkey eventually decided that while David might look and smell like one of his own kind, ultimately something was a little off. He met up with his other monkey friend on the other side of me, and this is where we parted ways. 

Scarlet ibis, giant parrots, and even a turtle (Hollie's favorite animal lately)!

When we got back to the car, Hollie drank some juice and was asleep and snoring in literally less than three minutes. She slept the entire hour-and-a-half car ride back home, and we couldn't believe our lucky timing for Hollie's naps the entire day. We were far too cocky about our skills as traveling parents and have since paid for it by realizing that we are way behind the end-of-semester grading due this evening, Dave has a sunburn, and I suddenly realized about an hour ago that I am indeed in my third trimester of pregnancy and probably should have taken it a little easier throughout the day.

Anyway, we just fell from "cocky" to "gratefully successful" and plan to sleep all three of us like babies tonight. Nothing is more lovely than sleeping in a pile of blankets under a big fan after a day of sun and museum legs. Mmmmmmm......

Dip our feet in the Gulf of Mexico? Have a close encounter with an untamed monkey? Literally feel claustrophobically surrounded by plovers and killdeer? ACCOMPLISHED! ACCOMPLISHED! ACCOMPLISHED!

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #5—Throw a Good, Old-fashioned Crappy Movie Night / Handmade Crappy Card Contest

This Friday's Awesome Thing will be a reprise of last year's Thing #24, "Host a Teetotaler's Drinking Party," so this year's Thing #5 incorporated the making of handmade invitations for said Mocktail Party. We also combined it with a movie night, complete with terrible-idea treats and a film that (a) requires no deep or critical thinking and (b) stars Barbra Streisand. As it turns out, The Guilt Trip is a guilty pleasure film that is legitimately pleasurable. We highly enjoyed ourselves. Thanks Mom and Dad Grover for letting us blow $4.99 on this Pay-Per-View purchase.

(We had about ten potential awesome things planned for today, but David was still finishing up his final projects due this evening, and I ended up taking a huge, unplanned nap in the late afternoon, etc. etc. Mary actually came up with this awesome idea for tonight, and we are very grateful for her. Otherwise, you would have had to read me blog about the awesome thing we did by going to bed at a reasonable hour.)

Nothing says "let's get the party started" like a handful of goldfish mixed into your microwaved popcorn.

It doesn't get much more awesome than a table pulled in front of the television covered with Red Baron pizza and scrapbook paper. It literally took me back to at least five different sleepover parties I participated in as a young girl living on the Wasatch Front. Seriously. 

This is to show my sister-in-law Rachel that we also ate Magnum treats (her favorite). They were oh-so-delicious and much less "mini" than we had anticipated. 

Dave, Mary, and I only had until the end of the film to create our invitations. It was a super important contest, and only one of us could be the winner. Here are the results:

From left to right: Mary's card, my card, and Dave's card.

Competitor A: Emily's card [front view]

Competitor A: Emily's card [inside view]

Competitor B: David's card [front view]

Competitor B: Dave's card [inside view—in case you can't tell, David made a pop-up card....the highball glass pops up]

Competitor C: Mary's card [inside view—the theme was "CLUE"]

As the credits rolled, the judges discussed the strengths of each card and reached their verdicts. Unfortunately, the judges were also the competitors, and everyone just voted for their own card, so it was a three-way split. The reward was just more Magnum minis so everyone is going to bed happy.

We're still not sure how we are actually going to deliver these invitations to their various recipients, nor did we ever decide on a specific time this Friday or whether people need to bring their own treats or drink mixins or not. So in terms of making actual invitations, this was a major fail. As for making AWESOME invitations? ACCOMPLISHED!

If any of my Houston relatives are reading this: y'all are invited to a Teetotalers' Mocktail Drinking Party this Friday night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They won't be around, so you know this party is gon' be CRAY-CRAY! Also, you may or may not receive one of the above invitations in the mail between now and Friday. Just consider yourselves invited and put it on your calendar.

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #4—Celebrate Mothers' Day with a Huge Grover Party

Not the entire Grover fam, but a significant number of us. We asked little Gabe (off to the left) if he wanted to sit up for the picture, but he politely refused.

The bonus of being in Houston for Mothers' Day is that the Grover family celebrates holidays in style. After church, everyone gathered at Dave's parents' new house (a house even more spacious for even grander dance-off competitions and grandchildren sleepovers) and ate Poppa Grover's famous chicken cordon bleu, a recipe cleverly modified for mass consumption. Jon made salty caramel ice cream, and my other brothers-in-law made various gourmet salads and other foodstuffs for the party. Moms and "all other adult women" were required to get in the food line first, and no one was allowed to sit next to their children (who always manage to somehow keep moms from eating their own food, one way or another).

The post-church party preparations.

Mary being an awesome aunt and winning Hollie over with reading a million books. They are both using their hands to quack like ducks in this picture.

Hollie thought her cousin Harris was hysterical. She took turns favoring/avoiding everyone else, but she always had a smile, a high-five, or a kiss for Harris.

She also pretty consistently favored her Aunt Liz (who really looks more like Hollie's mom than I do, both being blonde bombshells and all).

My nephew Matthew and I both had recent birthdays, so we split a cake to celebrate his 17th and my 31st. Note, also, the insane amount of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake and the various boxes of frozen puffs, chocolate eclairs, cupcakes, and I don't even know what all other desserts were laid out. It was deliciously insane.

Feasting.

Feasting in style.

Blondie-blonde Hollie and her dark-haired mama.

Daddy, Hollie, and Grandma Grover.

This photo deceptively suggests that Hollie knew what she was doing playing baseball with Leena. She did not. 

Dave's parents' new house came with a sweet swing set, complete with rock-climbing wall. Hollie couldn't figure out that you have to walk behind the swing set to climb to the top of the slide, so Leena tried to offer her a rope with which to pull her up. Holls didn't figure out how to play that game either.

It was a bit of an impressive feat to get everyone in the same spot at the same time for a group picture, so here's a scattering selection of preparation pictures while we were waiting for Momma Grover to find Poppa Grover somewhere in the house. It took a while for me to get used to huge family gatherings after marrying David (being from a relatively smaller family with few cousins, etc), but the chaotic love and wild energy has become something I love and look forward to. It was a real pleasure to celebrate Mothers' Day with such beautiful people and fabulous moms.

Fighting over who will lie in the front of the picture. 

The picture that started this post was the one with Dave; this is the one with me. Maybe I'll get a tripod for Christmas.

Thing #4: Celebrate Mother's Day with a Huge Grover Party = ACCOMPLISHED.

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #3—Road Trip to Houston

Hollie drank an entire sippy cup of milk before we had even left the driveway. 

Yesterday turned out to be a crazy day of grading, paper-writing, packing, and cleaning, so we decided to take one of our "extra" days between my birthday and Dave's birthday to be less awesome. (Although, I did finally watch the new version of True Grit on Netflix while I packed a bag for Hollie and me for our trip today, and it was quite awesome. Especially when David left to get a Coke from Sonic and came back with a chocolate sundae and mozzarella sticks for his pregnant wife. Midnight snacks are pretty awesome.)

Today, however, we took a totally awesome road trip to Houston, and we arrived just minutes ago. Hollie is asleep in a Pack 'n Play in the next room, and David and I are chatting with bro-in-law Andy while we wait for everyone to get back from the airport (where Mary and Mom are coming back from their own trip to see Drew and Rach in DC). It is 10:54 p.m. as I write this. 

We left our house at 10:00 a.m. The typical 9-hour drive was accomplished in 11.5 hours. All in the name of adventure!

Because our old Hyundai Elantra is less trustworthy these days, Dave's dad rented us a car—a Dodge Avenger. Since the radio is all but busted in my car, and the only other source of music is a broken tape cassette deck, it was fabulous to be able to plug in an iPod and have crystal clear reception the entire way. Not to mention cruise control. 

Hollie was surprisingly pleasant for the most part. We were really impressed with her. She definitely could use a playmate in the backseat, though.

Fed up with us.

I read Austen's Sense & Sensibility out loud to David whenever Hollie fell asleep (she hates my reading voice when she's awake, unless I'm reading one of her stories to her). I'm studying for my qualifying exams right now, so every hour counts!

Documentation that Hollie does indeed bite her thumbnails when she is bored, just like her dad. We haven't had to clip her thumbnails in months.

We made significant stops in just a few places. We had lunch in Abiline, which took over an hour—we found out a little too late that it was graduation day at the local university, so everyone was at Jason's Deli dressed to the nines. Still, it was very fun, and we chatted with good people while we waited in line.

The next layover we made in Hamilton, Texas, where we finally checked out The Kaboodle, a store we had already pegged as the precise halfway point between Lubbock and Houston, designated by a giant pink and zebra-print high-heeled shoe beckoning women to come and purchase their glittery wares.

The Halfway Point

The store is an adorable little side house behind a garage behind the house the owners lived in (behind the house that Jack built, etc.) Can you see the polka-dotted white building on the right? That is the store. We rang the bell and a super nice ponytailed man came from the house, through the garage, to the store and let us in. I felt a little guilty not purchasing anything after all that effort.

Hamilton has always been a favorite stop for us. The large gas station there has lovely bathrooms, and a whole row of rocking chairs out front. They also have these nice big slabs of benches for picnicking.

Pregnant Texan.

Seriously. Hamilton is the coolest pit stop. We couldn't ask for a better halfway point.

I'm a bit exhausted, so I will be wrapping up the post now. The drive was lovely—the bluebonnets are in bloom and we actually drove through the kind of green, hilly country that makes one proud to live in Texas. Wildflowers were everywhere, in all different colors. We saw a lot of Indian Paintbrush, and another bright red flower that I couldn't name. There were many papery pink blossoms, too, as well as yellow and white. I ached to have a field guide on me.

We only saw one scissor-tailed flycatcher this time (last year we saw several), but we did spot the one, as well as many cardinals, a million vultures, and some waterfowl that we couldn't quite make out from the car. 

We also ate at a Whataburger that was literally like the ones depicted on the television commercials, in which everyone shouts a welcome to you when you arrive, and the woman bringing meals sneaks your daughter a free cookie for eating all of her fries. (You know, because fries are almost vegetables.)

The Houston adventuring awaits! But first, some sleep, fingers crossed (since writing this blog post, Hollie has since woken and David is currently in there soothing. I'd better end this now so I can take the next shift and let Dave finish his paper).

Thing #3: Drive across Texas—ACCOMPLISHED.