San Antonio

One of the requirements for Sean's residency is that he publish a research project. He has been working on this Narcan project at work for awhile and was accepted to the FMX conference in San Antonio. He put together an awesome poster (which he printed on fabric!) to present. At this particular conference though the presentation consisted of standing next to your poster for 1 hour each day. The e-mails were super strict about how he needed to be there each day from Wednesday-Saturday. So instead of going down for a quick 1-2 day trip, he needed to be gone from Tuesday morning through Saturday afternoon. Neither of us were super excited about this considering how much he has been working this summer. Sean asked if I'd be interested in coming to join him for a few days. I said yes, which I think blew him away! He couldn't believe I was willing to leave my kiddos and fly to a different state! I honestly couldn't either, but he quickly booked my ticket before I could change my mind! I was so grateful for the encouragement from my mom as well as the help babysitting by my parents, Sean's parents, and Neil and Rebecca! We dropped him off at the airport on Tuesday morning. He stayed at a La Quinta hotel right across from the River Walk and the conference center. The conference center was HUGE! Like so so so big! You could fit thousands and thousands of people in there comfortably!

 Sean spent lots of time walking around the riverwalk and checking things out he would know what to show me when I got there. He ate at yummy restaurants and enjoyed a ton of really wonderful lectures at the conference. He also spent his nights catching up on e-mails from clinic and working on the mammoth job of scheduling all the residents for clinic, rotations, and call each month. He facetimed with us each night and especially Alana, but Lizzie too loved talking to Daddy on the phone.

 This is one of the many huge spaces in the conference center.

 This is right outside the mall where the manmade part of the river walk starts. You don't have to walk far to get to the real San Antonio river.

 This was the hall where they had the Keynote speaker who spoke on being grounded and even suggested some pretty eccentric ways of using the electrical outlets to be grounded! Luckily the other classes Sean attended weren't nearly so eccentric!

 La Quinta has Texas shaped waffle irons!

 Sean attended another ultrasound workshop which he said was really enjoyable, however without the background of the other one, would have been useless so he was grateful once again to have attended the ultrasound conference in San Diego.

On Thursday I got all the kids bags packed and wrote out a little schedule that talked about when bedtimes, naptimes, etc. were. I also got my bag packed, I was super amazed how light I can pack when I am only leaving for 2 nights and don't have any kids! My mom and Dad arrived at 7:30 on Friday morning and I quickly got the carseats into their car and made some quick explanations. I kissed the kids and rushed off. I was grateful that my Dad suggested we do the park and jet that we have done in the past instead of the long term parking. It made me put the address into the gps, which helped me avoid some awful traffic on i-15 that I saw while driving past and heard about on the radio. I made it to the airport in one piece and made it through the super long security lines about 10 minutes before my plane was supposed to start boarding. The boarding was a little late so that gave me plenty of time! I also realized that I should have done a little more planning for what would have kept me entertained on a 2 hour flight! I'm so used to thinking about what will entertain the kiddos and not myself. Luckily I had a random book downloaded on my phone! I took this photo out of the window to show the kids since they have been learning about clouds and rain lately. 

 When I got to San Antonio, I found the rental car place and got on a shuttle out to the rental car lot. I got to pick this really pretty red Nissan. It was a nice car. I felt like such an adult renting a car! Sean sent me the hotel address and off I went. The airport was only about 15 min from the hotel so that was really nice.

 I arrived at the hotel and changed into some shorts since it was pretty hot and humid. We walked over to the mall and river walk to get some lunch. I hadn't eaten since the tiny bowl of cereal I'd had that morning and was really hungry! We found this yummy Italian place on the River Walk that was advertising their 60 oz margaritas, we had water and lemonade. I had a chicken parmesean which I ate all of and Sean had a chicken baked ziti dish. After lunch we walked over to this cute little marble ice cream place that does mix-ins like cold stone. It was delicious! We both got cones with cookie dough and oreos mixed into cake batter ice cream. Sean also had fudge in his.

It really was some of the best ice cream i've ever had! It was so hot and was melting really quickly, so we had to work hard to catch all the drips!

We walked over to the Alamo to see if we would have enough time to see it properly or if we should come back the next day. We walked through the main church and then walked back to watch a brief film on the history. It was really neat and fun to learn about such a huge part of Texas history!

 They had a little replica of a hospital room they had there at one point. It looked horrible, and the sign said the soldiers had to take turns doing the nursing. It also mentioned they didn't like that very much!

 One of the reasons we rented a car was so we could go to the temple. We arrived just in time for the 6:30 session and they squeezed us in. The Temple is really small. There is no chapel so you just walk right into the ordinance room right after you get changed. They had set up a few folding chairs to make room for more people. It was a really loved experience! Gorgeous water features and stained  glass all throughout!

 After we finished the session we went across the street to the kneaders for some soup and sandwiches. I guess they serve french toast all day in San Antonio!

 We slept till 9 AM! That definitely doesn't happen at home! We went down to get some breakfast and I took some pics of the waffle irons, and the giant bowl of fresh whipped cream!

 Sean showed me all around the conference center and then he needed to stand by his poster for an hour.

 I took a picture of our door, because it had such a hard time opening. It had to be in just the right spot and pushed open with just the right amount of force.

 We were getting hungry so we walked back along the riverwalk exploring all the places we could eat. We found this little hole in the wall type of place tucked way back in called Cafe Guadalahara. It was delicious. We had horchata and fajitas and sopopillas and reminisced about our first date.

 After lunch we stopped at a pretty spot by the river to chat with Brian and Jill for a few minutes since they just had their new baby Xander =)

 We decided to go rock climbing, but as we were walking through the mall to leave, we got distracted by the sale racks in Macys. I think we ended up with 10-11 shirts and only spent $130, our receipt said we saved $320! It was so fun to spend time looking through clothes and trying them on and not feel in a hurry!

 We made our way to the rock climbing wall. The website said they had plenty for beginners, but I would argue that they had plenty for beginners who have been doing crossfit for 12 years! It was really really hard! They had no harnesses to assist with the weight and the hand holds were tiny! We had so much fun though trying and looking like fools=) We will for sure like to try again, just maybe a little less intense next time!

After Rock Climbing, we went back to the River Walk and finally rode the river boast. I loved the mix of history and humor our tour guide had! 

We were both pretty full from lunch so we went to a steak house and I had a salad and Sean had a burger. We also wanted to save room for more ice cream! 

After dinner and dessert, we walked over to the sky tower thing they build for the work fair in 1968 (i think). It was a super tall building and buying a ticket to the top included unlimited access to their 4d theater as well. It was already 9 pm and we were pretty exhausted! We rode the elevator to the top and walked around to see the city then read the exhibit on the 6 flags that have flown over Texas, then we went down to the bottom and watched a fun 4-d short of ice age. It was very fun! I would have liked to see the other 2 4-d films as well but I was sooooo tired. We went and got the rental car and drove to the gas station to get gas and some poptarts for our early fight the next morning. 

We woke up at 4:30 and flew back to Utah. As always I was excited to see the beautiful mountains and even more excited to see my beautiful kiddos. They had fun spending so much time with family, but were excited to see us and come home as well! I was so grateful to all who watched the kiddos: for my parents watching them on Friday and picking Brett up from school and driving them down to Papa and Mimi's house. They stayed with Papa and Mimi on Friday night and had fun being the first house guests in Papa and Mimi's new house.Then on Saturday morning they headed over to Neil and Rebeccas to play and spent the night on Saturday. Brett even lost a tooth on Sunday morning and Neil and Rebecca helped him out! It was a wonderful trip, one I will never forget!