South Padre

Vaca.  Ahhhh vaca.  I can't stop closing my eyes today, wishing myself back to the beach.  Tim's brother and his family live across the border from South Padre Island in Mexico. Adam works for the foreign service and their family moves every 2-3 years to a different corner of the globe.  They head to China to adopt their 6th little person this summer, so Tim's mom decided to organize a family reunion before they make the trip.  We got three condo units at a fabulous resort on South Padre Island, beach side, and spent the week hanging out, swimming, swimming some more, eating community meals, visiting a turtle farm, swimming, building sand castles, jumping enormous waves and swimming.  Did I mention the swimming?  It was a perfect set up for our group of 13.  Dreamy really.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves.  It's not often we're all together, which is a sad reality of all of us separated by a slew of miles.

When we flew in, Adam picked us up and took them to their Mexico homestead.  It's a beautiful house in a rough area, but basketball knock out in the alley made it feel like home.

All 11 of us us piled into their mugo van and headed for Texas the following day.  Cozy quarters, but who cares when all your cousins are in the same space!

We all checked into our condos and unpacked for the week before heading down for the good stuff.  Water and sun.  And a little orange juice in a mini wine glass of course.

The waves were crashing monsters the entire week, which made the kids happy ocean campers. Dude could not get enough, nor could his father. Mom and Marc's pool was the favorite.  It was bathwater warm, included swim up bar and food service (hello!) and was typically empty for our brood to occupy. And that we did.  Marc's muscles got the work out of the year given the 7 children who required constant pool tosses.

Every night we would trade off who cooked for the group.  We chose rocket popsicles, fresh from my memories of the ice cream truck in Worth, Illinois.  Wouldn't dream of purchasing something edible from an ice cream truck today, but the memories are fond all the same.

 These 2 are a pair and a half.  Great minds think alike and act alike too.  Enough said. 

The local turtle rescue was an awesome outing one morning.  It was free, which made it that much more enjoyable.  Most of the turtle inhabitants were missing a fin, so naturally Dude tore off the fin of his ceramic keepsake turtle to be more true to form.

And back to the pool...Dude worked hard at getting over the infinity pool wall...

 ...and he finally had sweet success.

 These two were darling with each other.  Carin and I ate up the opportunity to watch them interact with each other.  So similar in so many ways.  

Tim and Dude left half way through the week as planned, which we ended up regretting.  It felt so empty without them there.  Fortunately, my friend Amy and her little Liam drove in from San Antonio and spent the last 3 days with us!  These two were quite the match.

 500 pieces later, fini.  Amy and I made this a vacation goal.  

 Aren't they lovely?  They sure do know how to spoil their family.  It was a blessing that we were able to spend so much QT with them.

Tim's Uncle Mark was randomly in the area-ish for a work conference and flew in to hang with our group for a couple days.  After losing his beautiful wife, Rhonda, to cancer a few months ago, we were all so grateful for the opportunity to look him in the eye balls and squeeze him tight.

That's all she wrote.  South Padre definitely treated us well and we hope to go back again next year to do it all over again.  With the addition of Tim and Dude full time this go round.  Thanks Mom and Marc for making it all possible and for spoiling us the way only you can!