Driving to San Antonio from St. Louis is a 16-17 hour affair. Our strategy for this trip was much the same as when we traveled out to Washington. We would visit various friends/places along the way to break up the trip and make it easier. As mentioned in our previous blog post, the first day of traveling took us to Texarkana. On the second day, we drove south through Tyler to visit Bullard, my old hometown.
After Bullard, we kept going south to Houston, where we stayed with one of Yoli’s American friends from Bolivia (yes, you read that sentence right), Sonja. Sonja and her husband Jody have three kids, close in age with our kids.
(Keep reading for photos and video)
We stayed with them several days, and it was a lot of fun — especially for the kids. Sonja and Jody’s house has a nice play fort/house in the back yard, and a sand box. Their attic has a finished playroom sort of space where various kids slept. (Sometimes one of the kids would decide they didn’t want to sleep up there and would come sleep in a bed downstairs) Jody even set up a tent up there, which added to the fun.
One morning we headed over to the neighborhood pool. Xena (Sonja and Jody’s oldest daughter) was a decent swimmer with her floaties, and I think Jadzia might have been a bit jealous of her ability. But they all had a lot of fun — everyone except Joseph. Yoli says that he never has liked the sound of running water in the bath tub. Well, he didn’t like any of the water activities at the pool either. He started screaming bloody murder when I tried to take him through a sprinkler, or into the water.
One night, Yoli and Sonja baked cuñapés, which turned out pretty tasty.
All in all, our days in Houston was great. The only problem is that I was slowly getting sick, though it wasn’t clear at that point if it was just allergies/asthma or something more.
That did look like some fun. It’s always good to have out of town family and friends for the reason you stated, when traveling- you have a place to stay and have a good time! 🙂