Summer 2019 Kick-Off – Big Bend Texas!
I married a man obsessed with Texas. For a while he wanted to live there. I’ll admit that sometimes when we drive through the state – wealthy, well-run, vast and varied – I compare it to its dumpier, poorer neighbor to its east that we have chosen as our home and I think perhaps I should have listened to him.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, except that we are now on our third vacation in a row in the Lone Star State. You may recall that last year in June, we took the boys to a resort on LBJ lake, and then in October the Prof and I went to the Guadalupe Mountains, to bask in our insignificance on the occasion of my fortieth birthday. This year, for their first week of summer vacation, we took the boys back westward to Big Bend National Park. Jack was 11, Liam was about to turn 9, and Craig was 5.
We began the trip as we typically begin these Texas trips – staying a day or two with my sister in San Antonio. We enjoyed spending some time with my nephew, who is the Prof’s Number One Fan right now (“Where Uncle [Professor]? Where he?”). He is less enamored with me (“NO HELP SHOES Aunt [G] – NO HELP. I DO IT.”) But he turned 2 on June 1 (we were there! We sang happy birthday, he blew out candles on a cupcake),and he is at that darling phase of language acquisition where he narrates everything everyone is doing in broken English. He’s also a very bossy and busy toddler. At one point, Jack looked at me with exhaustion and said “he just keeps changing his mind on what he wants to do! He can’t sit still for two minutes!”
We got there on Saturday, my nephew’s birthday, and arrived in time for steak fajitas dinner and to sing over birthday cupcakes. “Cupcakes! Blow candles!” Everyone went to bed relatively early, and the next day we got up and going to check out a splash pad. Unfortunately, the splash pad malfunctioned shortly after we arrived, and stopped spraying water. I called public works, but they had not resolved the problem after quite some time, and so we bailed and headed home to let the kids jump around in the backyard sprinkler.
We brought our trains to my nephew. Sob. 
Train time! 
NUMBER ONE FAN 
Texas – everything’s bigger 
No water 
After a lunch of sandwiches and strawberries, my nephew took a nap and I sat down and wrote out a menu and grocery list for our camping trip, while the boys played video games.
It’s not a vacation, it’s a trip
We all lingered in the air conditioned house for most of the afternoon, and took a brief excursion to an absolutely stunning home-converted-into-a-museum, the McNay. Some of the works were stunning – Klimt, Picasso, Rodarte. The children had less than zero interest, however, so I mostly just followed them around making sure no one put an errant elbow through a canvas.
We checked out the giant koi in the courtyard pond, and staggered around the shimmering heat of the outdoor sculpture garden, before heading a few minutes down the road to a yogurt shop where the boys filled their cups with horrid combinations of sour patch kids and cheesecake froyo.
My sister made a chicken and vegetable casserole for dinner, and then we tucked the kids in bed and followed after relatively swiftly. Next morning, I woke up early and logged into work to release my time for the prior week and check in on a few items. I’m hoping that’s the last time I have to do so for this whole trip – that’s the goal! Then we packed up the car and headed over to Shipley’s Do-Nuts for a half dozen sprinkles donuts and some hot coffee. Our growing boys were not going to be fortified for the day with a breakfast of one donut, so I stopped at H.E.B. on the way out of town and bought bags of cherries and nectarines, carrot sticks and peanut butter, yogurt raisins, and string cheese and Goldfish crackers. Right now, they are chomping cherries in the backseat, and I’m wondering how long these snacks are going to last.
We stopped for lunch in Fredericksburg – a place we’ve been before. We had German food at the Auslander – red cabbage, warm German potato salad, fat sausages, some sort of rolled up roast beef and cabbage dish. I had a giant draft Hoegaarden, so light and frothy and lager-y. Perfect on a hot Texas day. I googled some good “would you rather” questions and we played all through lunch. “Would you rather eat 5 live spiders, or let 500 live spiders crawl on you?” “Would you rather have the power to control fire or control water?” “Would you rather spend one night in a haunted house alone, or one month in a non-haunted house that you can’t leave with your brothers?” Craig didn’t really get it, though he gamely joined in. “Would you rather know how to do magic, or know how to do magic? You can pick both.” Most of his options included at least one “kill yourself” – as in, “would you rather eat a live cockroach or kill yourself?” “Would you rather fly like an eagle or kill yourself?”
After lunch, we got back in the car to head toward Marfa. The boys took turns using our phones to take pictures, which is how I ended up with fifteen time lapse videos of the scenery going by, and one 5 minute 18 second slow mo video of Craig’s stuffed eagle. Glad we’re preserving those memories.
We stayed at the Riata Inn in Marfa – really more of a motel. Marfa is an artist community filled with an odd mix of jumbled crumbling structures and super ritzy fancy restaurants and houses. What is mostly is, is empty. Jack said “it seems like the apocalypse was here,” and compared to our joyfully cramped urban community where we live, I could see why he thought that. Low flat scrub, yucca stalks here and there, and off in the distance miles away an occasional adobe structure here or there.
Our room had two queen beds and a huge space for a couch and small cocktail height dining table (I saw those pieces of furniture in the other rooms). We had no such furniture, however, and that worked out great – the boys spread their therma rests and sleeping bags out on the floor, and the Prof and I each got our own bed.
After getting set up in the room, we piled up into the trusty Honda Pilot and headed out for some authentic Mexican food at Mando’s, a local dive. I ordered enchiladas with green chile – I was somewhat disappointed in the amount of green chile, but they still tasted good. Liam got a beef hard taco, and Jack and Craig shared beef nachos, while the Prof ordered chile verde, kind of a chicken stew. The boys asked to play “would you rather” again, but I was all would-you-rathered out, so instead I googled “good conversation starters for kids” and asked them a few questions. “What’s your favorite movie of all time?” “If you could have three wishes – and you can’t wish for money or more wishes – what would you wish for?” “What’s the worst part about being __ years old?” [Jack shouts “I know what mom’s gonna say! Her back! Or she works too much!” That is indeed what I said.]
We headed back to the motel after dinner, and the boys dashed into the pool for just a couple of minutes before lightning moved in. The pool, by the way, was maybe 10 feet square and situated right in the parking lot. We really enjoyed our motel but it was truly low rent.
After lightning drove the boys inside, we ran them through the shower and then tucked everyone into bed. We had a minor emergency when the lashing rainstorm from outside started to creep in under the door and dampen Liam’s sleeping bag, but we rearranged and eventually the rain stopped.
After three days of being basically within a ten foot radius of my children at all times, I was all set with interactions with other people, so I stuck in some headphones and played Broadchurch through the Netflix app on my phone, and everyone got some good, well-needed sleep.