Port Aransas – Part 1

I’ve mentioned this already, but we spent all of last week on vacation in Port Aransas! It’s a beach town on the northern tip of Mustang Island, about 4 hours from our house and 30-40 minutes from Corpus Christi. Jose came up with the idea several months ago of renting a condo there for a week, which turned out to be a great idea. It allowed us to have a family vacation, but also gave us plenty of opportunities to drive over to Corpus and spend time with his family. (Plus, Jose’s mom came and stayed with us at the condo all week, so she got plenty of Emma time and we got plenty of kid-free time!)

This post is basically a photo dump, so I’m going to break it into two parts, and consider yourself warned! Some of these are from my camera, some are from my phone, and some are “stolen” from Facebook. Jose’s family is so large and close that a lot of the relationships get confusing, so I tried to point out who is who and how they are related as we go along! (I get confused about how she is related to Jose’s cousins. They are Emma’s first cousins once removed. Right?)

On the windy ferry

There are two ways to get to Port Aransas. You can go entirely by road via Corpus Christi, but that doesn’t make sense if you’re coming from Houston since you’d have to go pretty far out of your way to get around Corpus Christi Bay. So we took the other route — in which the final step is a very quick ferry ride from the mainland to Mustang Island. The ride takes less than 5 minutes, which seemed really silly and made us wonder why they don’t just build a bridge. But it turns out that Aransas Pass is the thoroughfare for all of the shipping traffic to and from anywhere on CC Bay. I guess they could build a drawbridge to allow the container ships and barges to get by, but that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth, so ferries it is!

Before the wedding, and Emma’s first view of the ocean!

We timed the trip so that we could also attend Jose’s cousin Peggy’s wedding on June 22! The wedding was at a pavilion on North Padre Island…a pavilion that had been scheduled to have air conditioning installed prior to the wedding, but that didn’t happen. It was hot. VERY hot. But fortunately we were able to move several tables onto the deck surrounding the building and as long as we stayed in the shade, it wasn’t so bad.

Hanging out with great aunt Dalia during the ceremony.

Peggy and Porfy are married!

I packed that bib specifically for the wedding.

Emma got passed from family member to family member all evening, and she was a little trooper throughout. She looked a bit overwhelmed by all the people, but never fussed!

The day after the wedding, a bunch of Jose’s family came over to Port Aransas in the late afternoon to hang out at the beach with us for a few hours. No one ended up swimming because what you can’t see in this photo is that there was a solid 30-foot wide stretch of shoreline that was COVERED in nasty seaweed, and the water was filled with the stuff too. Oh, Texas. You are gross sometimes.

Family photo! I’m smiling despite the fact that my feet are in grossness.

Emma loved her second cousin Mac on sight. I mean L-O-V-E-D him. There were a lot of people around at every get-together and like I mentioned, she often seemed a bit overwhelmed by the crowd. But the instant she saw Mac, she would break out into a huge grin and start giggling. This happened literally EVERY time she saw him. I guess it was the hair??

Hanging out with Jose’s cousin Kimberly, her second cousin Maddy, and laughing hysterically at Mac.

Hanging out with great aunt Ami and Jose’s cousin Reina.

A bunch of the girls! Four of Jose’s cousins, one of his cousin’s girlfriends, and his brother Alex’s girlfriend Krystle.

Emma with Grandma and some of Grandma’s cousins. (Emma’s first cousins twice removed? Oh who knows.)

Whew — that was a lot of activity in our first two days, but the rest of the week was more relaxed. I’ll post the rest of my photo dump next week.