Sand Castle Competition

Despite having been to the beach just a week earlier, we decided to go to Galveston again on Saturday to see the AIA Houston Sand Castle Competition and support Amber's cousin Cynthia and her husband Aaron who were competing. We got there mid-morning and the parking line was ridiculously long. I eventually got out of the car with the 3 youngest and we walked about a mile along the beach instead.

We got there first, and played while waiting for the others to show up.

Amber finally got the van parked and met up with us. She had also invited the Quachs, so we found them and got set up on the beach.

We played while the competitors carved and sculpted. Here's Aaron working on the Grinch.

Amber took some turns watching their baby so Cynthia could contribute, too.

When it got closer to finishing time, we took turns wandering around to see the sand sculptures.

Cynthia's and Aaron's group's finished product turned out very nicely.

There were a few duds, but most of them were very good. The winner was "Scary Tales" on the bottom left of this compilation.

The kids' main engineering project of the day was this big lake.

We enjoyed ourselves for as long as we could before we had to head back home.

Beach

As a last summer hurrah, I took Friday off before the kids went back to school and we went to the beach in Galveston for a day. The kids started off with some boogie boarding.

Amber and I got some relaxing in.

When they got tired of boogie boarding, they had no trouble finding something to do in the sand and surf.

We had lunch at Jack-in-the-Box, then it was back to building sand castles.

And of course, dumping wet sand on your head.

Mercer Gardens

We felt like getting outside, so we went to Mercer Gardens on Saturday. It was the first time we'd been back since the Harvey floods. It was obviously still in recovery, but they've done a good job restoring it. They even added a few new features, like this guy.

I think this has always been there, but the kids decided it was a Harry Potter portkey, since it was near the mini hedge maze.

There were empty sections that hadn't been restored yet, but still plenty to look at, and plenty of critters to take pictures of. I really liked the coloring of this butterfly.

And this lizard's choice of perches made it look like a super-villain waiting to happen.

And of course, I had to take pictures of kids.

I even did a recreation of a classic picture of the girls from over 7 years ago.

When we were done with the gardens we went over to the arboretum to look around.

The kids were getting tired by then, but we got to see the cypresses, among other things.

On the way home, we got stuck in traffic on FM 1960. After we'd been sitting there for over an hour, Amber finally walked up to see what was going on. It was a bad accident and they had indefinitely closed the road in both directions, so we turned around and took the long way home.