Last week is Spring Break at UT. It is a wonderful thing that we never had at BYU. The first year we lived here we took Hannah on her first ever camping trip. We ended our trip after less than twelve hours at the camp site, packed the car at 6 am and drove into the sunrise, cold and wet. This was all after driving 8 hours to west Texas. Hannah was dry and warm but still not happy. Last year we decided to spend a few days in Houston with Hyrum's brother and his family. We drove down Sunday night and Tuesday morning, Hyrum left bright and early for some work in Palo Alto. It wasn't quite planned that way. I drove home Wednesday with Hannah all alone and Hyrum got home on Saturday. We did have fun with the Wrights, though.
You may have guessed that the last couple of spring breaks, though fun in their own way, weren't quite what we planned. This year we decided to keep it simple. One day, one city, and no camping. We spent yesterday in San Antonio. We've talked about going since we moved here and lately Hannah has taken to asking if Daddy is at the temple whenever he is gone. We figured we'd take her to one and show her what our nearest temple looks like. If we were going to drive all the way to San Antonio for that then we had to see the Alamo and other sites.
We stopped at the temple only to find that it was closed at the moment so we turned around and headed to the Alamo. We parked at the Mall and walked down the road to the Alamo. There it was, that iconic piece of Texas history. There was an enormous line outside so we looked and moved on to what remains of the Mision San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo). We bought our traditional fridge magnet and patch and then moseyed on down to the Riverwalk.
The Riverwalk was really neat. It is below street level so the noise is just from
people enjoying their day and not from cars driving about two stories above you. There were barges giving tours and restaurants lining the walkway. At one point it actually goes into the mall. No doorways or anything just right to the food court at the Mall. We ate lunch at a place called Casa Rio. It was good Mexican food. Hannah liked throwing her chips to the ducks. We sat right next to the river.
After that we made our way back to our car and drove a few miles south to the rest of the San Antonio Missions. There were five total, all but the Alamo still function as part of the San Antonio dioceses. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and walked through the Mision San Jose. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sun. By the time we finished Hannah was begging for a nap. We got in the car and started the 1 1/2 hour car ride back home. We decided to stop at the temple again to see if it was open and let Hannah walk around if she was still awake. We helped her stay awake with pretzels and fruit snacks. She was so happy to finally see the temple up close. The stained glass windows are just as nice outside as they are inside and Hannah loved smelling the flowers. It was great end to a great day. I'm glad that we have finally had a complete and satisfying Spring Break trip.
