San Antonio, Day 1

I have been so excited about this trip! This is our first time to go away without our boys. And with little Eva coming, it will be a while before we can do it again. It has really meant a lot to me, just in the planning stages. :)

We got up at 2 am, and headed to Nashville at 3. We've been at Mom and Dad's for a couple days, so that is where the boys are. We parked and waited for the shuttle to take us into the airport. We got our tickets printed and headed to security. I thought I would have to opt out of the body scan because of the pregnancy, but they say it is safe, so I did it. After I went through, they held me for a minute though because my scan wasn't clear. The lady had to pat me down anyway. :) I had left my necklace on, and she said that was probably why. Then any time they do a pat-down, you get this "hand test." So, a man took me aside, and took a little wet wipe thing and wiped it on my palms. It was to check for explosives! Wow! Of course, it took all of 1 minute to take care of these things, but I thought it was hillarious! AND, our laptop was in the suitcase. They had to take it out and re-scan my bag. Sigh. I didn't even know it was supposed to come out. There weren't any signs or directions about it. Live and learn.

I was getting so nervous waiting for our flight. This being my first time, being nervous and pregnant, we knew I should eat breakfast. :) So, we ate at Wendy's, and then had a good 45 mins. before we boarded. The whole experience was so fun for me. Take-off took me by surprise! Jamin had told me it really goes when it goes, and he wasn't kidding. But as it was going up for so long, and banking, it kind of made me light-headed. It wasn't really a big deal but I was glad to get on the ground. I took pictures, but I think I was so tense, I didn't enjoy it to the fullest. :) The first flight was only 35 mins. to Atlanta. I think we were only at maximum altitude for about 5 mins. :) Very fast!

The next flight was a lot more fun for me! We had just at an hour to get our next plane. Atlanta's airport is HUGE! We had to get on a train to take us to our concourse. Unbelievable! So many people, going so many directions. I enjoyed this flight way better. :) It was almost two hours, and the flight attendants served drinks. Jamin and I played cards for a little while, and I dozed. It was a completely full flight, and we were on the very last row. It took a long time to get off. :)

We thought our hotel had a shuttle, but we didn't see it. We called the hotel adn they said they didn't have one of their own, but they recommended a few. But the cheaper of the few was almost $40! So we waited for the bus, which cost us $2.20. :) Good for us! The driver was very helpful and told us she knew exactly where we needed to go, so we didn't have to signal to get off, she just stopped and said, "That's your hotel, right there." We liked her.

Our cute room:

We ordered pizza. By this time it was 12:30 central, 1:30 to us... we were starving and tired. So we ate pizza by 2, and took a nap! At 4:30 we headed out to explore the riverwalk. It was SO beautiful!

A little off the riverwalk stands the Alamo. Since we were there, we decided to look through. It's free, but we got there about 30 mins before it closed. We're going back, but here is a preview of it. Inside the main building, it is a shrine. You are not allowed to take pictures or video, and men are asked to remove their hats. You can't touch anything. There are a lot of pictures and plaques of the men who died. There was a painting of Davy Crockett, and one of his rifles. (He doesn't look anything like Fess Parker.)

The grounds are beautiful! Check out this huge cactus! Ouch!

On to the Tower of Americas... by this time I was getting a little tired of walking. But we were already over halfway there, so on we went.

At the top. It was open-air and super windy! It felt nice though, a few degrees cooler.

The admission into the tower included a 4-D IMAX show. It was so cool! We sat in non-moving seats because of little Eva. It's a good thing we did, because the show included a football game, and bull riding... yeah, a little rough! Don't we look nice? I seriously considered stealing these:

Outside the tower, there were tons of fountains. Beautiful! We spent some time just looking at them, enjoying being together. :)

We finally headed back to our hotel, exhausted. We stopped at a few shops, and grabbed a cheap supper at McDonald's. We were both SO worn out, we kind of limped back to our room. It was about an hour from the time we got our supper. We've been awake about 22 hours now, except for our nap! :)