Trevor's Birthday In Texas

We got to celebrate Trevor's birthday with the Cronk side of the family in Texas.  We set out on Saturday, August 19th and Trevor was very excited when the plane took off.

He carefully studied the safety card.

As soon as we arrived at Gramma and PopPop's house, the kids wanted to swim!

Sarah immediately befriended the dogs, Jack in particular. She had a blast coloring in PopPop's office with Jack hanging out next to her.  She drew pictures of Jack and Sophie (and even one of Spike with a halo).

 On Sunday, we headed to Auntie Diana and Uncle Stephen's house for a get together with extended family.  We got to meet our nephew (and the kids' cousin) Brayson!

What a little cutie!

Of course, the kids wanted to swim in the pool there as well (with the giant flamingo float!).

Sarah pushing Brayson around in his little boat.

Austin hanging out with Uncle Brian (aka Cubby)

 On Monday, August 21 we headed to the Dallas World Aquarium!

These little blue penguins are SO CUTE!

Checking out the crocodiles from above.

And then down on their level!

In the underwater aquarium part, we saw a diver cleaning the tank...

 And some giant fish

 The kids found Dory!

And Nemo (2 smaller ones behind the coral)

Check out the cool seahorse.

 Then into the shark tunnel!

Check out this cool sawfish shark with the reflection of the boys underneath in the tunnel looking up at it!

For scale - this is Trevor right under the shark.

Trevor is REALLY into sharks lately, so it was SO exciting for him to see these sharks close up!

 We also got to watch the shark feeding from the tunnel.

Then checking out the flamingos.

And a black panther!

(Austin tells me that only 2% of panthers are black, so this was pretty a gorgeous rare animal!)

 We popped back to the aquarium to see the manatee come out.  The manatee was in a separate tank while the diver was in there cleaning, because apparently the manatee likes to play with the diver, but doesn't realize its size and can hurt him.  After checking out the rest of the areas of the aquarium, we stopped back just in time to see the manatee released again before we headed home.

Sarah was very excited to see "Barbara Manatee"

(anybody catch our Veggie Tales reference?)

 After the aquarium, we went to lunch while the eclipse (partial in the Dallas area) was going on.  When we came out of the restaurant, we didn't look at the eclipse (since we didn't have appropriate protective eyewear), but we did catch some eclipse shadows coming through the leaves of the trees like a pinhole camera.

Brayson came over for a bit the next day while the kids swam some more.

We had a super yummy chicken dinner at Babe's.  They had lots of fun signs around the restaurant and I thought this one was pretty appropriate for our visit to Texas.

 Trevor was pretty excited about the chicken!

On Trevor's birthday on Wednesday, I asked Tracie (our awesome photographer - Tracie Bea Photographie) if she had a quick shot from our Brintnall family photo shoot the previous week that I could post for Trevor's birthday.  She sent me a collage of his newborn photos and this fun collage of pics of him each year (this year in the center, showing off his muscles!):

We relaxed a bit that day before having lunch at a yummy food truck where the kiddos played bean bags while we waited for our food to be ready.

PopPop taught Austin how to play Monopoly and Sarah and Trevor had fun being the bankers.

With so much fun going on, Trevor fell asleep on the way to his birthday party that afternoon.

 Cubby hosted us at his restaurant, Pinstack for some birthday fun!

First, bowling...

My big kid birthday boy!

(Oh, he won the bowling game, by the way!)

 Then about an hour in the arcade with unlimited game cards. (Thanks Cubby!)

We did lots of race car races (Trevor's other recent favorite aside from sharks)!

Then Trevor got to open his presents from Gramma and PopPop.

He was very excited about the shark pirate and other pirate friends he got.

We had a big platter of yummy apps and some pizza for dinner, then cake.

 Before heading out, Trevor got to pick out a prize with Cubby.  He came out with a stuffed boa constrictor that he named "Bowie".

We had to head home on Thursday, but we got to spend some time with Auntie Diana and Brayson on our way to the airport.

We had some tired kids on the way home.

 But a fun time was had by all!

Hopefully we'll get to see everybody again soon!