galveston or bust...

hi, it's ben again! since luke still has to take a lot of naps during the day (and he actually takes them best in his bed, unlike me at his age!), momma and i end up being stuck inside the house a lot more than we'd like but are trying to make the best of it. that means sometimes things get a little crazy in here! for any of you that know me well, you know i love going through the car wash. i'm a bit obsessed with it, you could say, but it's the simple things in life, you know? anyway, i still love pushing around my airplane and wooden wagon and anything else with wheels (office chair, high chair, etc) so momma made my own car wash under the desk!! check it out...

as you can see, i love it and like to keep my vehicles shiny clean with several washings throughout the day (not unlike daddy and grampee with their vehicles, actually!)...

i also recently developed another obsession, which is driving over speed bumps in parking lots. i call them "yellow ones" since most around here are yellow and look forward to running any errands at all that might involve the opportunity for momma or daddy to drive repeatedly over these bumps in the parking lot. if i get to push the shopping cart over them on our way out, then my day has pretty much been made. anyway, i realized that the leg of this desk makes a great "yellow one" and so spend a good deal of time each day taking my clean vehicles over the speed bump and then doing it all over again...

when i'm not busy with that, i still enjoying wearing momma's shoes (and daddy's too of course) around the house, sometimes even without pants on...

and once i even got a hold of momma's camera to snap a few pictures of my own. she was off with luke and i didn't see what the big deal was. she was pretty t.o.'d when she found me, but later couldn't help but laughing when she saw the pics i took. this was one of about seven or eight of my shirt, the ceiling, and up my nose...

i guess it's not terrible that we're inside a lot lately because it really is quite ridiculously hot here in the summer. i actually don't mind it much because i'm a boy, who cares, but momma isn't a huge fan and i've also been getting a lot of bug bites and require bug spray then a bath afterwards and frankly it's just easier to stay inside and eat bon bons (HA - kidding!). anyway, of course i still do play outside some and one of my favorite things to do is play with water in containers. here's just one picture of that from the other day...

speaking of water and getting outside, momma mentioned on a whim that we needed a family get-away and daddy agreed and made it happen, so we went to galveston last weekend to play at the beach and just get away for a few days. i've been to the beach once before but was too young to remember and momma just wanted to play in the sand and water with me. so we took off on thursday and headed to the shore. we had a great time at "the strand" - here's daddy and the water line from hurricane ike a few years ago - crazy!

and just in case we were missing all the "weirdos" in austin, it turns out there are a few in galveston too... if you can't read it, it says "this car is 'green.' in an effort to conserve water, it shall not be washed." momma especially loved it because she used to drive a faded light blue ford tempo just like this one in college! (it probably wasn't much cleaner, either!)

we enjoyed some fresh lime ade and ice cream and taffy at one of my new favorite places ever too - a confectionery!! yum!!

then it was off to our beach house, which some cousins were super nice enough to let us stay in! on friday morning i got to have powdered donuts on the porch with daddy - whoa!

then it was off to the beach with momma while daddy stayed with a sleeping luke. i won't get into the details of the beach trip much or momma might cry, but let's just say it was not exactly the experience she was hoping for for me. i loved playing in the sand! but it was all a bit of sensory overload for my two-year-old self and i wouldn't move an inch from the area where i first sat down (which was about 2 feet from our car and right in the middle of the other parking area for cars because you drive onto the beach in galveston). so i was in the way of other beach-goers and didn't want to move and especially didn't want to get into the water or even walk into it. momma didn't push me because she knows that would have only made things worse, but she was bummed that i didn't explore it more and we didn't have a lot of time there that morning, so that was that. anyway, i'm sure i would love the beach after taking it all in on my own time, but for this trip with a little baby and the texas summer sun, it turned out to be a bit of a "bust." it was, however, great to get out of the house, and i definitely enjoyed all the special vacation treats! and here are some pictures of my relatively short but enjoyable beach play...

and here's what luke thought about the whole thing...

and now, i'm off to wash my airplane... bye!!