Keep Calm and Carry On

Tuesday was one of the craziest days of our life! Buckle up, this day takes some crazy turns!

We awoke at 9 AM with plans to visit the pool and then pack up to head to Houston. We were planning to spend 2 days there visiting the zoo and Kemah Boardwalk.

When we opened the patio door we saw a gloomy rainy day. We went to the concierge lounge and did some weather research. Hermine? Where did Tropical Storm Hermine come from? Since Houston was getting more rain than San Antonio and it is farther from home, we made the choice to stay in San Antonio instead. We had planned to find indoor activities for the day during the rain and then visit the San Antonio Zoo the following day. After a few phone calls our reservations got moved around and we decided to head to a local museum, The Witte.

It poured on us the whole way to the museum. Abby and I ran inside and Marcus got soaked parking the car. Abby loved the dinosaurs and had lots of fun showing us the "rawr" move a dinosaur makes.

The Royal Garden was just beautiful. It was my favorite part!

This was my favorite dress- it is from 1993 and on loan from the girl's parents. So very pretty!

They had an area inside where kids could create trains for dresses with felt flowers. Abby played with them for a long time.

We then braved the rain and ran to the tree house in the back. It was fun- all for kids with lots of neat things to discover.

It was in the treehouse that we could see just how much water the San Antonio River was getting. The basement in the tree house had water coming in mutliple places and the lights began to flicker. So, we decided it was probably time to go. In the time we made the decision to leave and made it back to the main house, the power had completely gone out and a transformer had blown.

They were keeping people inside the building and calling 9-1-1. I'm still not sure what happened, but I believe that live wires were down on the front of the property. They were very disorganized at handling an emergency and after we assisted in calling the energy company we left. Driving away from there was one of the scariest car rides- the roads were flooding, the wind was blowing so hard the car was shaking, and lights were out.

We got back to the hotel and found that it was without power. The hotel was on generators giving us some power. We put Abby down for her nap and hung out for another hour. Once she was up, we used free movie tickets from the concierge to take Abby to her first movie.... and left 20 minutes in. It was too loud and just big for Abby. She wasn't interested at all.

We went to the nearby shopping mall (rain was gone) to walk around and kill time before dinner. We bought a few sale items and enjoyed the trains at Barnes and Noble. Dinner at PF Changs was wonderful. With all the weather, it was dead- I've never seen PF Changs so empty. Maybe 6 tables were seated.

Abby enjoyed snow peas, rice and Playdoh! She is a goof ball.

After killing time, we were ready to head back to the hotel to put her to bed. It was about 7:30 and we were tired from a crazy day. We arrived to discover all power was out at the hotel. The generators were out and everyone was being given flashlights. It was so hot! We decided to just drive home. I packed up our whole room in about 15 minutes by flashlight in the heat while Marcus entertained Abby and chatted with valet.

As we left San Antonio, I was looking on my phone at FB and realized the storm was still in Austin, traffic was awful, flooding was occurring and the rain was really coming down. We called my sister who lives in New Braunfels and drove to her home to spend the night.

Our vacation changed 10 times that day, but I am so grateful we are all safe and home now. We drove home this morning after shopping the outlet malls in San Marcos. We plan to go to the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco (our 3rd zoo trip planned this week!) tomorrow and enjoy a lazy afternoon and evening at home.

When we originally planned this vacation, it was for South Padre Island. We moved that to Galveston to save some miles and that was cancelled by the hotel last week when it was delayed in their grand opening. We were so disappointed, but I am so glad God knew more than we and moved us closer to home and away from the Gulf.