November Party continued....Thanksgiving in San Antonio

We drove over to San Antonio the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and picked up John, Melissa, and Maycee at the airport there.  Then we started partying!  We checked into this enormous, emaculate, amazing hotel/resort Wednesday night.   

Thursday we woke up and decided we wanted to skip our Thanksgiving dinner reservations and go swimming at the pools/lazy river/slides they had right there at the hotel.  We swam all day and then went to a fancy restaurant and had steak for dinner that night.  We put the kids to bed and went out for a walk around the hotel grounds.  They had Christmas lights put up all over, which were synched to Christmas music.  Such a fun atmosphere!

Jerz was so tired from swimming all day she fell asleep in my arms (after throwing somewhat of an embarrassing fit) at the restaurant and so when we came back to our hotel room, of course she wakes right up.  So here she is having her "Thanksgiving dinner" in our room, by herself.

The next day we went to Sea World.  It was even better the 2nd time!  It was all decked out for Christmas, so everything was different this time.  All the shows were different.  Probably even better than before.  We LOVED it!

Here's Jeter, Maycee, and Jerzi, being brave and sitting in the splash zone at the Sea Lion show!  Notice, they're the only ones down there.  Crazy kids!

The kids loved feeding the dolphins!      

This time they had a Sesame Street Christmas show.

And Grandpa and Grandma spoiled Jerzi with this dolphin that she is in love with!  She never let that thing go the rest of the trip!

Even though it was a little chilly outside, we all decided to do this fun ride called Journey To Atlantis.  I think it was the only ride where we all could go, thanks to Jerzi's big poofy pig tails that got her an inch or two taller.  The only problem was that it was a ride where you get wet.  We all tried to get in the middle seats so we wouldn't get wet.  Well, it didn't work very good!  I think we all ended up getting at least somewhat wet.  All the kids loved it and wanted to go again, and I was the only adult that wanted to go again.  There was no line for it, so me, Jete, Maycer, and Jerz went again.  After the 2nd time, no line again, so we went again.  They were still asking to do it again, but we had to leave cuz the park was closing.  This isn't what it looked like when we went on it.  This pic is from Sea World's website, so you can get a clearer pic of what kind of a ride it is.

We went when it looked like this outside, dark.  Which made it even more scary, and more fun!  We couldn't believe that Jerzi liked that big of a drop, but she was grinning from ear to ear when we would get to the bottom.

The crew

While the kids acted goofy and pulled faces while they waited in line to get on the Sea World Express Train, we received a phone call nobody ever wants to receive.  John's dad, Circle P (John Pocock Sr.) passed away.  I can't imagine how much John was hurting to not be there with his family at that time. It was hard, I think, for all of us to fully ejoy the rest of the time we had, but John was such a good grandpa and dad.  He played with the kids and was determined to still make sure they had a good time (we didn't tell them about it).

The train took them through a snowman village.  I loved the white lights and snowmen.  I secretly wanted to go on the little train with just me and Had through that cute little village. 

We also saw the stinky penguins, which we didn't see last time.  Penguins are cool to watch, if only you could breathe while you're in there, it might make it a little more easy to watch them.

I LOVED the candy cane forest!  I kept commenting on it, and nobody else seemed to care or even notice.  They had a little band in the forest playing and singing Christmas music.  I could have sat there with Had and listened to the music, sipped on hot chocolate,with all the lights surrounding us, for hours.  I'm not sure if he could have, but I would have loved it.  I don't know what it is, I guess I'm just a sucker for Christmas lights...and Had!

The Alamo

We went to the riverwalk, and this time there were Christmas lights hanging from all the trees, buildings, shops and restaurants.  They were everywhere.  I loved it!  We took a little boat tour, and our tour guide (the guy in the left with a Santa hat on) seemed so familiar to me.  I couldn't figure it out, or who he reminded me of, but he busted out a little spanish in the middle of his tour.  With that, and a few other things he slipped into his tour speech, we figured he had to be LDS.  We talked to him afterwards and yep, he went to BYU-Idaho, and he also said that I looked really familiar to him too.  We figured out we were there at the same time.  We probably had a class together.  Small world!

Have I mentioned I love Christmas lights?  And their reflection on the water....amazing!

I decided I love San Antonio at Christmas time.  This is just a regular street, with all the trees lit up.  Why doesn't every city do this?

Plus, they have these cute little carriage rides all lit up and giving rides to people everywhere you look.  Jerzi is really into princesses right now and about died when she saw this!  So fun!

With John's dad passing away, they went back home a little earlier than they were planning.  So we had the whole last day to just relax, explore, and have fun with just our little family.  This was the Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel.  It was ginormous!

We had fun exploring the hotel grounds and goofing off. 

  What a vacation!!!

We feel very lucky and grateful to be able to do things like this with family, and create such fun memories.  Thank you so much for everything John and Melissa!