Houston 2015

We drove down to Houston to visit Mr. A’s grandpa and aunt during the Memorial Day weekend (I do realize that was 2 months ago…) Mr. A’s grandpa and aunt hadn’t met Jensen yet, so we decided to make a little weekend trip. We left late Friday evening and Ian hadn’t taken a nap that day so before we even got on the highway he fell asleep…for the WHOLE 4 hour trip! Jensen however thought facing forward was the most awesome thing and didn’t fall asleep until we were almost 1 hour away from the hotel, but apparently he’s a really good road tripper, he just sat back there and looked out the window or whatever was on the DVD player.

: First road trip! On our way to Houston

: Driving a car in “Mexico”

: Driving a car in the toddler area

: Saving lives, one mannequin at a time

Our first full day in Houston we went to the Children’s Museum of Houston. This place is great for kids of all ages!! They have a toddler area for under 3 only and it’s on the second floor so it’s less chaotic. The first floor is where everything else is. There is a mini-city where older children get a “debit” card and go work jobs in the city. It’s quite detailed. There’s also an around the world section and a “how things work” section. We only touched on a few areas. Ian of course was only interested in driving every single vehicle. Great place for kids, highly recommend.

: The Recess sandwich (grilled cheese)

: Homeroom Burger w/sweet potato fries

: The Principal w/ Truffle Fries (foreground)

At first we wanted to go eat at Natachee’s Supper N’ Punch for lunch, but there is only street parking and there was a lot of construction. So we went to Bernie’s Burger Bus, they are located in a shopping center so there is a large parking lot. This place was great, yummy burgers and there’s a gutted out bus in the middle of the restaurant where the kitchen is on the inside. (I have a craving for burgers now…) The staff was super friendly and helpful and the general vibe inside was great. The original bus was parked outside too so we tried to take a picture…

After lunch we tried to get the kids to take a nap at the hotel…but Jensen refused to sleep in the pack and play and Ian just wanted to jump on the pull out bed, so after failed attempts of napping we went to Mr. A’s aunt’s house, she lives about an hour outside of Houston, of course the kids fell asleep in the car and we had to wake them up, Ian was extremely grumpy and Jensen was clingy. Great first impressions kids…but in true toddler fashion after dinner and a little bit of ice cream they were both running around like they owned the place and a “I don’t want to leave” meltdown happened at the end of the evening.

Sunday we went to the Houston Space Center, another great family place. The tram tours are very popular so do those as soon as you get there and we recommend getting there early especially on weekends. There are 4 of them and they all end at the same place, Rocket Park, which has the huge Saturn V. We went to the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), because the line was the shortest 🙂 There is an “Angry Birds” section for the kids, which we didn’t venture to until right before left…if you start off with that then you won’t see anything else and that would be sad.

: On the Tram

: The kids were a little bored

: Inside a shuttle

: Some old school computers!

: Saturn V

We ended up eating lunch here, there is actually a surprising amount of choices, we were surprised they had such good hot dog topping selections. Maybe we were just really hungry… Jensen fell asleep in the stroller and this allowed Alex to take Ian to watch a video that was narrated by Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean Luc Picard), which for Mr. A instantly made the video awesome. He’s a Trekkie 😀 After buying a couple souvenirs, it was close to dinner time so we drove to Kemah Boardwalk, but parking was awful and we thought “not worth it”. Maybe if we were younger and without young children it would be fun, but it just looked like a stroller nightmare. Instead we headed over to Houston’s China Town to eat some dinner at House of Bowls, a Cantonese restaurant. Mr. A was in heaven, I had to stop by Six Ping Bakery to grab some Asian bread and we also stopped by Fit a store that sells a lot of Japanese home goods, like cutsey mugs and other random things you don’t need but must have.