Houston Family Vacation

The weekend of January 14th we got to go on a fun family vacation to Houston to see the Olympic Marathon Trials, and take Boston to the Children's Museum. We left for the 3.5 hour drive Thursday afternoon, ready to put our new portable dvd player to good use. It definitely helped make the long drive more bearable! Boston loves his Disney movies.

It actually took us a lot longer than 3.5 hours to get to Houston because we had to make a few stops on the way, and one of those stops was the DMV to get our Texas Driver's Licenses. Yes, we know we've lived here for 1.5 years, but it's just so easy to procrastinate going to a place as fun as the DMV. 2.5 long, tortuous hours later, I finally had my Texas Driver's License. The crappy thing was that after all that waiting, Scott wasn't even able to get his because his birth certificate was a copy, and you have to have your original. Lucky for him, he gets to experience that fun wait all over again.  

Anyway, Boston was going a little crazy by the time we finally arrived in Houston, so we stopped at a shopping mall in search of food, and let him run around a little bit. He had fun trying on some of the crazy hats at Rainforest Cafe, and then we ended up eating dinner at Chiles. 

Thursday night we were able to stay with some friends that were in our Student Ward in Orem who now live in Houston. We wish we lived closer to them because Boston loves hanging out with their boys. The boys stayed up way too late running around while we talked and caught up with their parents.

Friday morning we woke up and headed to downtown Houston for the Children's Museum. It's a pretty awesome place. 

Boston really enjoyed all the different activities they had to do there, but he was also having a really hard time behaving because of his lack of sleep, and the long travel day we had had the day before. So, the Children's Museum was a mixture of fun, melt-downs, sharing problems, and a potty training accident. It was quite the adventure. 

I had my first blogging friend meet-up while we were at the Children's Museum. This is Laura, another mom/runner blogger. It was really fun to meet her and her cute daughter. 

We ended our 2 hour trip to the Children's Museum with a grand finale melt-down from Boston. Can you say nap time? Boston was asleep before we even left the parking lot. We transferred him from the car to his jogging stroller with his pillow and blanket and then wheeled him up to our hotel room where we all took a much needed nap. (Boston's in his stroller under that green blanket to the right of the picture.)

After our nap, we walked over to the Houston Marathon expo and enjoyed walking around and trying a bunch of samples. The weather was perfect the entire weekend. It was a little chilly, but not too cold. I think the temperatures ranged form 40-65 that weekend. It was heavenly. We love Texas Winters. 

Friday night we enjoyed hanging out in our hotel. It was a really cute hotel called Magnolia that was right downtown. They even had free cookies and milk at night, and a yummy free breakfast in the morning. 

Then Saturday morning came, the highlight of our entire trip, and not just for me either. Scott really enjoyed it too, which made me so happy. Watching all the top runners in America compete for a spot on Team USA for the 2012 Olympics was seriously AMAZING! 

We weren't sure how Boston's attention span would do over 2-3 hours of watching runners, so we brought the dvd player along where he happily watched Nemo for a little while. It was pretty chilly first thing in the morning, so we bundled Boston up, and Scott mentioned that he looked homeless in this picture. That made me laugh because he kind of does. He's the cutest little homeless person I've ever seen though. 

After a while Boston decided he wanted to get down and cheer on the runners from the curb. We had fun running from one side of the block to the next so we could double the amount of times we saw the runners go by. 

If you've ever read a running magazine, these will be familiar faces to you. Front to back: Desiree Davila, Shalane Flanagan, Deena Kastor, and Kara Goucher. I was in awe the entire time that I was actually seeing all the top runners in America run in person, and so close-up too! 

The way they ran the course is what made the entire day such an awesome experience. It was a loop course, so we were able to see both the men and the women run by at least 8 times by watching them on one side of the block, and then going to the other side of the block to watch them again. That's much better than most marathons where you usually only get one chance to see them run by.

Scott did an awesome job taking pictures of the runners during the race. This is Ryan Hall, the second place finisher for the men at this marathon. 

Scott was able to get a picture of me with all the top female runners. I was pretty excited about that. 

Who knew there was so much muscle under those skinny guy runner legs? I didn't until I saw this picture. 

After the race we packed up and then spent some time at a park right by the finish line. I went for a little run and Scott and Boston played on the playground. Then we ate at a really yummy Indian restaurant. It was my first time eating at an Indian restaurant and I really liked it. 

The drive home ended up being a lot longer than 3.5 hours too because Boston started crying and saying his ears hurt, so we had to make a really long stop at an after hours medical place and then another long stop at the only pharmacy open late on a Saturday night to get him some antibiotics for an ear infection. 

It was a fun trip with lots of ups and downs, but watching the marathon alone was worth all the downs. It was a really, really nice Christmas present from Scott to me.