the nguyen-ers

S P R I N G B R E A K 2 0 0 9

What a nice break we had! We got a jump start and took the kids out of school on Friday and headed to Port Aransas with the Clarks. We made arrangements several weeks prior to rent a beach house, not knowing the weather forecast, and to our disappointment, it was very wet and cold and windy. But inspite of it, we did as much as we could and everyone was a real trooper.

The first excitement we had was getting to the beach. We hit some major traffic and then there were a few too many pee stops along the way (guess that is what 6 kids and two moms need most) so it was about 6pm before we arrived.

And then, the second big excitement was seeing the beautiful blue house we had rented (see picture below)! NOT. We opted for the cheaper of two choices and quickly, we realized we had made the wrong choice. I mean, how much furniture does one home need when renting it to people. Clearly the owners didn't like to get rid of anything and the rental agency had a few different definitions of what "clean" was. So after the toilet had overflowed, due to poor plumbing I'm sure, and not being able to sit down, and a few other things I won't mention, we (Karmen and I) sent the men to the store as we were going to have to do a little cleaning ourselves. While they were gone, we thought the rental agency should know a thing or two about our unhappiness, at 10pm, so the contract said to "report and problems immediately" and that is what we did. We just wanted them to know that we had a few problems and that some compensation would be nice. The lady was clearly not happy with us and said to meet her at the office immediately. Promptly, I called Huy. He always gets us out, or usually is the one to put us in, but not this time, these types of situations. I am probably going into way too much detail for a blog post, but to finish up the story, Huy was able to one, calm the lady down, two, convince her to let us stay the night there rather than be out in one hour (that was her plan), and three, be the peacemaker in the situation.

We ended up staying in the blue house after we felt we had cleaned it enough to make it work!

So on our rainy days, we cleaned the house, ugh, went to see the USS Lexington aircraft carrier which was fairly cool, visited several gift shops so the kids could find their treasures, and toured the town of Port Aransas.

I just really love the beach. I love the sounds, sometimes the smell, and just watching the kids love the beach too. So when it was finally time to head to the beach, when the rain had broke for a bit, it was great fun. Tanner and Cole started by just sticking their toes in, then they were up to their knees, and finally, the just started swimming. The girls were quick to follow and the little ones, well, they just enjoyed sticking those toes in, but mostly just finding "sheshells" as Kaylie calls them. The kids were darn cold when they had finally had enough and Kaylie's bucket was practically full of her prized "sheshells." I couldn't get enough cute pictures of all the fun they were having!















We decided the best way to describe our weekend in Port Aransas was to call it a "memorable adventure." We had good times, but maybe not as many if the sun had been out. Thanks Clarks for coming on such an adventure with us. Love ya!

But our week continued on... we used some time to get some chores done, mostly yard work, we hung with many friends at the park one afternoon, and instead of going camping (I couldn't recover fast enough from the previous adventure to pack up for another one just yet), we camped out in the backyard and had smores on our indoor fire. The kids thought that was too great. We'll be doing that again shortly I am sure.















We had the Spring Break 2009 grand finale at McKinney Falls State Park which we had never been to before. The weather was what we had hoped for at the beach, but you have heard that story. We hiked around, splashed in the water, ate a picnic lunch, tried a little fishing, met our first pet pot-belly pig, and the kids even did a little swimming - again, the water being a bit cold, but kind of refreshing. Nike had the time of his life. It was a great way to hang as a family and enjoy our last, unscheduled Saturday before the upcoming, sport-filled, ones come.

*Disclaimer... with the number of photos I took, and wanting to post individual pictures of many of them rather than collages, I slacked on getting the week posted. Honestly, I am a bit tired of doing collages, but I haven't found a way to post a ton of pictures as easily as with them, so in an effort to get the highlights of our Spring Break posted, I opted for more collages this time. If anyone has any good, other ideas, out there for me, PLEASE let me know. But know this, I have a hard time choosing just a few pictures as I think every one of them, with my kids in it, or Nike, are cute!*