My Birthday Present

So, remember how I said Steve gave me the BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER?

It was a vacation. Just the two of us. Complete with solo airplane flights where I could read/nap/not wrangle anybody who was climbing up my face. He sent me an email the morning of my birthday with my flight itinerary and a little note with clues about a ton of fun things he had planned for us to do. I didn't have to plan anything. I was so excited.

So right in the middle of our month apart, Steve's parents took over the kiddos and I got to fly out to visit Steve in San Antonio for four days/three nights. After weeks apart, I was so excited to see that cute man again!

I flew out early in the morning, had a stop-over in Phoenix, and landed in San Antonio at about one in the afternoon. The hubs picked me up right after he finished his residency interview and was still in his uniform so he looked extra handsome. :) We drove in to San Antonio and he showed me the hotel room in which he had been living for the past few weeks (pretty nice, actually!) and we got changed into comfy/cute clothes for our first "date."

We walked from his hotel over to the Tower of the Americas, a 750-foot-high building (thats 1/8 of a mile high) that looks kind of like the Space Needle. (There is a picture of it from the outside later on.) It was built for the World's Fair in the 60's, and guess what? There is a fancy restaurant at the top! You can see the whole city spread out beneath you; it is amazing.

We didn't have to dress up because we went for happy hour and got a late lunch, starting with some (virgin) Mango Daquiris. I don't even really like mango, but those drinks were delish! Look how happy Steve was!

Then our tasty bruschetta and our spinach artichoke dip arrived, and we dined in style.

Halfway through our mango drinks I asked Steve to switch spots with me, because he had a better view. Gentleman that he is, he complied. And I decided to Vanna White my bruschetta for you.

Steve's hotel was within walking distance of a ton of fun things, so for our evening date we went down to the San Antonio riverwalk, where you walk along a manmade diversion of a river. There are shops and restaurants all along it, people taking tours in these cute boats floating along, and lots of bridges, pretty plants, and fantastic people-watching.

We walked a big long loop holding hands (isn't that just the best? I love holding his hand.) and perused all the restaurant options before settling on a cute little bistro. We took a lot of pictures of food on this trip, because... we love food. Sorry if you don't. So here is Steve's gorgeous burger plate and me looking surprised. If you squint you can see people on a boat tour behind me--we sat right on the water. There was some good people watching, too--there was a lady behind us talking to some cops! We couldn't figure out why, but as we sat there more policemen came. We figured it must not be anything too bad though--I feel like she would have been more concerned than she was if someone had fallen in the water or something!

I got a Monte Cristo sandwich, which is an egg-battered and grilled ham & cheese sandwich dusted with powdered sugar, with jam on the side to dip. I know it sounds gross, but it is surprisingly good--I don't even like ham and I like it! I get one about once a year, and this seemed like the perfect time. And the sweet potato fries! Yum. :)

It was pretty late when we finally got back to our room, but it didn't matter because there was no one to make us wake up in the morning. :) Well, actually Steve had to get up and go to work for a couple hours. My plan was to sleep a little bit after he left, and then walk down to the Riverwalk mall and shop for a bit until he finished up at 1pm. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to my phone ringing, and Steve saying he was off work. I had slept for a full TWELVE HOURS with no problem at all. Guess single parenting had me worn out. :)

He got home and we went to Panera for lunch (or I guess a LATE LATE LATE breakfast for me) and then he had another surprise for me--Schlitterbahn! What the heck is that? It is an enormous water park about 30 minutes outside of downtown San Antonio. I was kind of nervous--it has been at least ten years since I last went to a water park. But it was CRAZY fun!

We went on their floating river in some innertubes (twice) because (a) it was relaxing and (b) they had some very fun rapids. There was no line, you just grabbed a tube and hopped in. We also waited in line to go on a couple of the big slides. The first one was a roller coaster style slide that actually pushed you way way up with water and then let you shoot down. My stomach kept dropping in that tickly roller coaster way.

And I got brave and went on a blacked out slide (only because we could go on a double tube). I was terrified, like little-kid-wanting-to-cry terrified. Something about being enclosed in a dark tube full of water... Just sounded like a terrible idea. But it was really fun! I would even do it again sometime.

(Borrowed these photos from here since we weren't brave enough to bring the camera to a waterpark--I once dropped a different camera in the ocean. Thanks internets.)

We stayed until almost 8 that evening, then went "home" to shower and change and then went to a late dinner at Chipotle followed by a 10:30pm movie (for real?!! It's been ages since we went to a movie that late! It was so fun!) and saw Moonrise Kingdom, which was quirky and fun and just what we needed.

Steve had the next day, 4th of July, off so we slept in (we even missed the free hotel breakfast) and shared a Cinnabon for breakfast. (This is becoming more and more of a food log... Hmm...) We looked up movie times and bought early tickets to see Brave. It was pretty crowded so we did a little shopping (Old Navy, for me) and then headed back to the theater. Cute movie, but maybe a little too scary for the kids yet. And since we weren't being good examples for anyone, we decided to have frozen yogurt for lunch...

Even though we slept in we were still tired, so we took a nap and then headed out for a special dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. (There are TWO in San Antonio! The closest one to Winston is 1.5 hours away!) When we got to the mall where it was situated, I noticed these beauties...

Check out how small that van looks next to them!

We ate a fabulous dinner and had way too many leftovers...

And of course we picked out some cheesecake slices to take home...

After much, much searching for a Redbox we picked up the latest Sherlock Holmes to watch that evening. We set up on the couch and got halfway through, then took a break to watch the fireworks right from the hotel room window!

We just sat on the floor snuggled up in our jammies and watched the show over the Tower of the Americas (which is the little Space-Needle-ish building you see there!). It was the best seat I've ever had for a fireworks show!

And of course after the fireworks we celebrated our independence by finishing our movie with independent slices of cheesecake.

Hers:
(The 30th Anniversary Cheesecake)

His:
(Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake)

Oh my word. The ganache.

We were also happy to see how quickly we both fell in love with San Antonio. Since it is one of only a handful of choices for residency spots, it was great to see it and talk about how much it reminded us of San Diego, which we adored. We would be ecstatic to land there next year.

It was probably the best trip I've ever been on. Everything was perfect and fun and giggly. I felt like we were teenagers (in a good way). I loved that he had planned so many dates for us, and it was so fun to just sit together and talk and laugh (and we had plenty of time to do both since we were eating all that food!). We laugh so much together; I am so thankful to be married to my absolute favorite person in the world. It's great to be legally tied to your best friend. ;)