We took a family vacation to Surfside Beach, Texas from July 14-21st and had a wonderful time. We invited Dario's sister Natalie and her son Tyson along with us and we're glad we did. The kids had a cousin to play with, we got someone to visit with, and I had and extra set of hands for cooking and cleaning and entertaining. We rented a little beach house called the "Sea Witch", which was only one house back from the beach. This is the 3rd house we've stayed in at Surfside, and it was the best, in my opinion. The location was great and it was decorated really nicely. The owners lived right next door and they told us they used to live there before they made it a rental, so I'm sure that's why so much work was put into it.
All the kids in the living room.
All the kids in the living room.
The kids wasted no time getting to the sand and making castles.
And finding shells.
Yes, we gave her boobs. We're bad parents. I only wished we had a bikini top to put on them...
Gabby as a mermaid. 
Almost every evening at dusk we went out and caught sand crabs. They're fast little buggers so you have to keep a sharp eye on them and pounce quickly. And then you have to run screaming back to the bucket because they're little squirmy legs tickling the inside of your palms is freaking you out. That's the rules.
Here's a large crab that the people across the road from us pointed out. It was a female with egg sacs on her underside, and she was snapping mad!
My boys are even more handsome at the beach, don't you think?
The two Dario's flying a kite.
Gabby holding a shark head we found on the beach.
We took a side trip up the Schlitterbahn in Galveston. It was SO much fun! We only took a couple of pictures because we were just so busy going on all the slides and the lazy river over and over. We arrived at 10:30am and they had to kick us out at 8pm. Really. Me and kids were sailing down the lazy river and 4 lifeguards at different stations whistled at us and told us to get out, and Gabby was saying "Maw-om! They want us out!" and I just kept saying, "Look away Gabby. We didn't hear them!" Finally they turned off the waves and forced us outta there. 
On another day we went back up to Galveston and rode the ferry. It was the first time my kids have been on any type of boat. We saw lots of other big boats, and a TON of dolphins. One of the neatest things we saw were a group of dolphins that were swimming in front of a huge boat and jumping out of the water. It was like they were racing. Can you see them out front in the picture below?
On a couple of different days we went geocaching. It's another type of treasure hunt, like letterboxing, but you use a GPS unit to find the location of the cache. This is a picture of one that was actually full of prizes. It was called "Pretty in Pink" and it was a box full of toys and jewelery and other things that all had pink on them. The kids were so excited to find actual "treasure".
On a couple of different days we went geocaching. It's another type of treasure hunt, like letterboxing, but you use a GPS unit to find the location of the cache. This is a picture of one that was actually full of prizes. It was called "Pretty in Pink" and it was a box full of toys and jewelery and other things that all had pink on them. The kids were so excited to find actual "treasure". 
On the way home we stopped in Brenham to get some ice cream at the Blue Bell Creamery. It was delicious as always, and only $1 per huge-mongous scoop. It broke up the drive home and was a perfect ending to a wonderful vacation.
