Crystal Beach 2013

We have been looking forward to this weekend for a while!  For my mom's 60th birthday this year, she decided she wanted to go to the beach.  Everyone's summer schedules were already pretty full, so we had to push it a little later.  This holiday weekend seemed perfect, because a few of us already had Monday off for Labor Day.  My mom and Bob wanted to find something close to us, so that we didn't have to travel as far with Kinley.  We decided on Crystal Beach, outside of Galveston.  For Katie, Brent and Scott, it was about the same amount of driving as it would have been to go to Port Aransas.  We were SO glad we chose the location we did.  For Texas beach, it was awesome!  There was almost no seaweed at all, and the water was so calm. 

We all got there Friday evening, got unloaded and got the grill fired up for dinner.  We all walked down to the beach, just to look around, but nobody went swimming or anything.  The house was pretty well suited for our needs.  The bedroom/bathroom arrangement was good.  We could have used a little bit bigger living room/kitchen space for the size of our group, but it was great.  The upstairs deck had a gate, which was nice for keeping Kinley contained.  Underneath the house were 2 big porch swings, and an outdoor shower, so we could clean off when coming back from the beach.  We weren't right on the beach, but you could see it from the house, and it was less than a 5 minute walk away.

We ate dinner Friday night, and just spent time chatting and hanging out.  We also had an early birthday celebration for Kassie.  Guess who LOVED the cake???

On Saturday, we all headed to the beach, and spent most of the day there.  We all came back to eat lunch, and John and I stayed in while Kinley napped, but then headed back out again as soon as she woke up.  Kinley wasn't too crazy about the sand at first, but she warmed up to it.  Aunt Katie spent time playing with her in the sand, and she started getting more used to it.  Even though she was lukewarm about the sand, Kinley LOVED the water.  We would take her out past the breakers in her float and she would just sit there and float along.  Several times, she looked like it was going to rock her right to sleep!  Her float has a shade cover on it, so we would slather her with sunscreen, and then we were able to position her to where she was mostly shaded, too.  Luckily we came out of the weekend with no sunburns!!  Scott, Todd, and Katie brought their kayaks and they spent a lot of time out kayaking in the water.  The waves were so smooth, they really didn't have any trouble at all.  John and I even took a turn going out in the kayaks.

Saturday night we celebrated my mom's birthday and Sunday was pretty much a repeat of Saturday.  We spent a lot of time lounging in the shade, or floating in the water.  Sunday afternoon, we took a bunch of family pictures on the beach.

On Monday, we spent the morning cleaning up around the house and getting packed up.  We were lucky that our check-out time wasn't until 3:00, so we didn't have to rush around.  John and I took Kinley down to the beach one last time.  Once we were all packed up, we headed into Galveston to have a seafood lunch.  It was pretty busy, due to the holiday.  We had a nice lunch, and then all headed back to our homes.

We had such a great time, and hope we can make this an annual thing - at least some kind of trip, if it's not the beach.  I love my family, and it was so much fun spending this time with them!