The Beck Family: Congrats Airman Beck!

We went down to Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio, Texas to help Cory celebrate his graduation from Airforce Basic Training and have a mini-vacation. We flew down with Maddie. It was her first flying experience and it went a lot better than I had anticipated. We flew out of Detroit early Thursday morning and returned Sunday afternoon. The way down went pretty smoothly. Maddie fell asleep before the plane even took off in Detroit!! She slept for about an hour, woke up, ate a few snacks and played with EVERY toy in the diaper bag. She got a little restless for the last 15, but other than that she did really well. The only problem on the way down was that the car rental company did not have a toddler car seat for Maddie--they had like 30 infant seats, but no toddler seats. After spending about an hour at Enterprise they found some secret carseat stash in the back and we were finally on our way.

We stayed at the Omni on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Josh's parents, Abby, Blake, Aunt Lisa, Uncle Greg, Aunt Shannon and her parents all stayed at the Omni too. The riverwalk was BEAUTIFUL!!!! It was so amazing to be in the big city and have this hidden riverwalk that you could walk down to and the whole city would disappear. Josh and I (and Maddie too) had a lot of fun on the river walk. Our hotel felt like you were in the middle of some little Mexican village--not in the middle of the city.

We were able to go on base on Thursday night to meet up with Cory and the rest of Josh's family. He showed us arround a little bit and we ate dinner on base. He had pretty strict requirements about when he was available to be with guests, so we weren't able to spend quite as much time as we wanted to with him. It was so nice to see his smiling face and give him a big hug though. We are so proud of him. Friday he went through graduation and then was able to go off base with us. We all went down to the riverwalk to have a nice dinner to celebrate. Saturday we all went to Sea World, which Maddie LOVED!!!! Then we left early Sunday morning to come back home. We had a few airport fiascos on the way back home. We were running a tad later than we wanted to on the way to the airport and we couldn't find a gas station close to the airport to fill the rental car back up with gas, so we were a little stressed. When we finally go to the car rental place, we ran and hopped on the shuttle. I was carrying our carry-on, the diaper bag, my purse, and Maddie. We were the first stop shuttle stop at the airport, so we got off and ran in to check in for our flight. We checked in and went to security where I noticed that I didn't have my ID. I dug all through my stuff and couldn't find it, so I had to get out of the security line and go back to the ticket counter where luckily they had my ID. I went back and walked the rest of the way through security with Maddie and Josh. When we got to the other side we put ourselves all back together and I said "Phew! We made it!" Ten seconds later, I turned to Josh and said where's the diaper bag with all the toys. He said "You had it!" So, I went and tap, tap, tapped on the TSA guys' shoulder and told him that I thought I left my diaper bag on the other side of security when I was digging for my ID. He went and looked for it for a few minutes and returned empty handed. He said that it wasn't there and advised us to check back at the ticket counter, so Josh, Maddie and I all went back to the ticket counter to look for our missing bag. They didn't have it there either. On our third time through the security line, the TSA lady checking IDs recognized us and asked if we had lost something. We told her what was going on and she said we probably had time to check with the car rental company. So Maddie and I went and sat at the gate eating breakfast, while Josh tried tracking down the shuttle we rode to the airport on. I had pretty much made up my mind that we weren't going to have any diapers, toys, or snacks for the 3 hour plane ride home when Josh showed up with the bag!!! I told him that he was the hero of the day!! I still can't believe that we got it back!

In the short time we were in San Antonio, we had a great time. Josh and I both said that we needed another weekend to recover when we got home though.

Maddie had just woken up from a nap when we met up with Cory. She didn't really like the new uniform too much!

She had fun swinging around with Grandma and Grandpa B!

Maddie really liked playing with Uncle Blake!!

Before we went to San Antonio Josh and I were watching Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel and we saw a place called Lulu's bakery that makes 3lb cinnamon rolls. We decided we had to try it. It is a little dinner type place. The cinnamon roll was so big it looked like a birthday cake!! When the waitress sat it down Maddie said "WHOA!!"