SAVE on Your Next Trip to San Antonio!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of SAVE . All opinions are 100% mine.

     Have you ever been to San Antonio, TX? Ever wanted to go? I do! Especially after checking out all the awesome info on the SAVE website. SAVE – San Antonio Vacation Experience is a website where you can find all kinds of great deals for hotels and attractions in San Antonio.

     Whether you're a history buff, thrill seeker or food connoisseur, San Antonio has something for everybody. I am really just overwhelmed by all the thing San Antonia has to off. I don't think I could fit it all in one week, which would be a typical vacation period. But say I was going to plan my San Antonio vacation and take advantage of some of SAVE's great offers--here is what I would like to do:

     1. First off, I would have to choose my hotel. The Menger hotel looks like a neat option, since it's from the 1800's. The SAVE discount makes the King bedroom $119/night, which is $30 cheaper (per night) than the "best rate" of $149/night. So if we stay 4-5 nights, that's a savings of $120-150!

     2. I would like to go to Sea World. I think our daughter would love it and the baby might like it too. We always enjoyed the one in Florida. Since both of our kids are under 3, the $10 off ticket price would probably be best for us. But if you have teenagers, the 4-pack would probably be best for you!

     3. I would love, love, love to go to Six Flags. Since we have 2 young kids, that's probably not realistic for us, But if I were going to go, SAVE has some coupons available.

     4. The Natural Bridge Caverns is something that would be really neat to see. And SAVE offers $2 off children's tickets.

     5. If you like Laser Tag (and I do!) Laser Legend offers a second game free! And it seems more involved than any laser tag I've ever played. But I would love to try it out!

     6. The North Star Mall offers a free premier passport. I know the mall seems a rather anti-climatic destination, but we always seem to end up at one when exploring a new town!

     7. Finally, what is a trip to San Antonio without a visit to the Alamo? That really is a must! Alamo Sightseeing Tours allow you to See the Alamo, take a riverboat ride, visit Mission San Jose, Mission Concepcion, Japanese Sunken Gardens, Buckhorn Museum and the Market Square. SAVE offers a $2 discount for kids and $5 for adults!

     And there is tons more to do in San Antonio. I can't cover it all. There are zoo's, gardens, waterparks, shopping, dining and historical places. You should check out the SAVE – San Antonio Vacation Experience website to see what San Antonio has to offer and check out the Limited Time Offers. Also, follow @SAVEinSA to receive updates on deals, limited time offers and trip planning.

Day Trip to Sarasota

     I'm just sitting here at my computer, not sure what to do next. I'm in one of those modes where I've been going going going so long that now that I have nothing to do for a little while and I'm not quite sure what to do with myself! 

     Yesterday we went down to Sarasota for the day to visit some friends we haven't seen since we moved away in May. One of my best friends spent the day with us and we met one group of people for lunch at Troyer's Dutch Heritage. It is a restaurant and gift shop in the mennonite community of Sarasota. I didn't venture to the upstairs section this time, which is mainly things like purses, jewelry and other crafts and collectibles. 

     The restaurant has a buffet, though they also have a menu. I really like the apple butter and peanut butter spread they have that you can put on their rolls. I think the peanut butter spread is a mixture of peanut butter and honey and it is a little more liquid than regular peanut butter. You can buy a lot of their baked goods and jams and such in their downstairs shop, which is more edible items. They have bread, cookies, fudge, donuts, candy, cheeses, jellies, etc. It would be too easy to get carried away with all the good stuff they have in there. I managed to get away with a couple pieces of fudge and a donut (which I still haven't eaten). 

     After lunch, we went over to the Sarasota Square Mall where there is a Yoder's deli that we used to like to eat at. I really love their chicken salad, so I had to get a little container of that and I also got a jar of apple butter. As soon as I figure out how to replicate the chicken salad, I will let you know!

     For dinner we went over to the home of some other friends in the area. It was a nice visit, but we got away kind of late and still had an hour and a half drive back to Tampa! So we didn't get back until after midnight. We were definitely tired when we got back and weren't in a hurry to get up this morning! 

     I seem to be coming down with a cold and the sinus pressure has been giving me a headache all day. And I am still drained for the rest of the week. I feel ready to go to bed, but it is still too early. Normally we like to go look at Christmas lights on Christmas eve, but I think we are all just feeling too drained. We will probably look at some tomorrow, though.

     Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow, but it will be pretty busy, so I may not. Either way, I hope you all have a great holiday! 

Travelling for the Holidays

     Well, this is the third day we've been on the road and we're all getting a little stressed out and cranky. Monday and yesterday were both really long days and I haven't posted in my blog. Last night I didn't even turn on my computer at all when we got to the hotel because I knew if I did, I would get to bed later than I needed to. So I didn't get online at all--even to check my email (which I know must be packed by now).

     We've had some pretty nasty weather the last couple days as well. Monday morning we woke up to a clap of thunder about 20 minutes before I actually had my alarm set for. Wouldn't you know--in west Texas, where it hardly ever rains, it decided to rain right when we needed to be loading up the car. So my husband tried to load the car when the rain let up a little bit.

     So we finally got out the door and drove in a consistent drizzle pretty much all day. Sometimes the rain was really nasty, sometimes it stopped for a little while. We stopped at J Gilligan's in Arlington for lunch. We wanted to try their "Irish nachos" after seeing the restaurant featured on a show on the travel channel. We had intended to make it to Shreveport, but ended stopping about 45 miles west of there in Marshall.

     We expected to see less rain yesterday and at first the weather was dreary, but not rainy. But after we cut down south on I-49 in Louisiana, we went through the worst weather ever. It was NASTY. My husband said it was the worst he's ever driven through. The only thing that kept him able to drive was watching the tail lights in front of him. It was raining buckets and the wind was blowing hard. But we survived.

     We stopped in Baton Rouge and ate at Copeland's. It was a little on the expensive side, but my husband remembered liking the seafood gumbo and since we were going through Louisiana, it was the thing to do. There was not much on the menu that wasn't fish or seafood, and I can't stand either. So I got sausage and red beans and rice. My husband said he actually liked mine better, mostly because it was warmer than his. So, he got it out of his system.

     We finally made it to Pensacola last night and we were completely exhausted. I was ready to go straight to bed. We had to get up early again because of time constraints and my little girl was really ornery at breakfast. She didn't sleep too well last night and isn't really feeling great today. But hopefully we'll get to rest up tomorrow and maybe we'll all be feeling a little better.

Going Home from Arkansas

     Here I am, on the road again, on the way back home from visiting Mom and Dad in Arkansas. We had a really good visit. We caught a cold sometime in the course of the visit, so I currently have a bit of a sore throat, the sniffles and an occasional cough. My poor little girl has had some congestion for a couple of days and nasty sounding cough. Other than that she seems perfectly normal and has no fever.

     On Tuesday evening we went to Larry’s Pizza for dinner. If you’re ever in the Little Rock/Bryant, AR area, I highly recommend you check it out if you like pizza. We go to the original, which is in Bryant, but I think there are a few locations in Little Rock as well. Larry’s only does the pizza buffet two nights a week (Tuesday and Friday), and that is when you really want to go. Just a warning though—it gets pretty crowded and you will most likely have to wait at least 20 minutes to get your seat. But it’s worth it.

     There is a salad bar and a pizza bar, but the cool thing is the pizza buffet pretty much comes to you at your table. So while you may grab a piece or two from the bar just to get you started, the really good stuff will be brought around by the servers. They just walk around with trays of pizza, announce what they have, and if you want some, just raise your hand and let them know.

     They have a board near the front with a list of their popular pizzas and if you want to request it, you can write your table number under the pizza you want, and when one is ready, yours will be one of the first tables they bring it to. Some pizzas (like their baked potato pizza) may sound kind of odd at first, but they are pretty good.

     Another thing I like is the dessert pizzas. They have more than the typical cinnamon apple pizza (though they have that too). They have chocolate chip cookie pizza, peanut butter cookie pizza and chocolate peanut butter pizza. They also have really good cinnamon sticks. Trust me, there will be more pizza than you know what to do with!

     There is also a game room with games like ski-ball, air hockey and others and some of them give out tickets (kind of like Chuck E. Cheese’s) which you can turn in for little prizes. I’m a little old to be impressed by the offerings there, but it’s great for the kids. All-in-all, Larry’s pizza is a great, family friendly place to go, so if you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend you check it out.

Monahans State Park and Baby's New "Bike"

     Well, our company just left and now we're left with that feeling of not knowing quite what to do with ourselves. We now have a little trike for the baby because grandpa felt compelled to get her one this weekend after letting her ride the neighbor boy's when he took her outside. She had never been on one before and didn't give it a second thought, but after riding it, she never fails to notice it when we take her in or out of the apartment! She has also stared saying the word "bike" a lot. So grandpa felt like he had to get her one since he "started something." 

     So, to Babies R Us we went, and left with a nice, new Thomas the Tank engine tricycle that makes noise when you push the buttons. And believe me, the buttons get pushed! Unfortunately, there is no way to turn the sound off, so we just have to tolerate it, or hide the bike. 

     We went to an ice cream party at the home of one of the families we go to church with and had ice-cream, cookies, cake and brownies. They also had a couple of bounce houses set up for the kids, so my husband and I got into one with our little girl and though she was nervous at first, she really started to have fun, but was ready to get out after about fifteen minutes. She was also entertained by the older girls playing around the bounce house next to us. 

     This morning I was dragged out of bed by my husband (not literally, but you know what I mean) in order to go to Monahans Sandhills State Park with his grandparents before they left to go back to Florida. He used all kinds of bribes (more than necessary, but who's complaining?) to get me up and out the door. 

     The park is about 32 miles from home and is just like the name indicates--a bunch of sandhills. The front office rents out these discs (basically like big frisbees) on which people can slide down the hills. Sort of like sledding, only it's sand instead of snow. It would probably be fun to do if I had more energy. Nobody in our group did that today, but if we ever go back, maybe we'll do it next time. 

     When we left the park, we decided to go into Monahans (the town) to get a drink from DQ and decided instead to try out a restaurant called Pappy's BBQ. We're always looking for a good barbeque place. I must say it was not what I imagined. 

     It was a counter service restaurant where you could either buy your meat buy the pound or get a sandwich or plate. We all ordered sandwich plates. I got a sliced chicken sandwich with potato salad and baked beans. The food wasn't horrible, but it wasn't the best barbeque we'd ever had and I think we were all unanimous in saying it wasn't worth going out of our way for. But we tried it. 

Fiddlesticks Farm and Michael's Charcoal Grill

     Well it's been another busy weekend, but maybe not quite as busy as last weekend. On Friday we tried to go to a big yard sale with a friend in Midland, TX. It was supposed to be a big, indoor yard sale made up of donated stuff. The only thing is, when we got there, they were charging $3 per person, including babies! So, it would have been $12 for all 4 of us, and $9 for our family alone. And no guarantee that we would find anything we wanted in this garage sale that was probably made up of donations from people who couldn't sell the items in their own yard sales. So, we decided not to go after all. We ended up going to the mall instead. 

     On Saturday we decided to go out to Fiddlesticks Farms, a family-owned farm, also in Midland. We wanted to find a pumpkin patch our little girl could take pictures in. It was $20 for us all to get in and it's still negligible whether it was worth it, but we did get some cute "fall" pictures. 
     There were a few neat things we didn't get to try because it was so hot. There was a corn maze I would have liked to go into, but like I said, it was hot, and I get so easily tired out lately, so I didn't want to risk it. There was a hay-ride out to the pumpkin field, but we didn't do that either. 
     The farm had a little barn that had cows, goats, chickens and pigs (babies and adults), and you could even pet some of them if you wished. Our little girl really had a blast looking at the animals, so maybe it was worth it just for that. They also had milking demonstrations every couple hours in the animal barn, but we didn't stay for that.
     One of the snack stalls had an "old fashioned soda wagon" with five different flavors of soda. I was really tempted to get one, but it was $6 for a tin mug of soda, and the picture on it was really ugly. If it had simply said "Fiddlesticks Farm" it might have made a nice souvenir to keep, but I just could not bring myself to spend that much on a cup I didn't really like. We did, however, get a bag of kettle corn and it was good and fresh and had that just right combination of sweet and salty. Only problem with that kind of stuff is you tend to eat more than you ought to! 
     Overall, we were there about an hour and half. We might have stayed longer if it wasn't quite so hot. Maybe next year we will try to wait till later in the month (though it may be more crowded) and then we went to get lunch at a local hamburger restaurant called Michaels Charcoal Grill. This was a counter-service restaurant, not a sit-down restaurant like we were thinking when we went in. There was plenty of seating though.
     The food was pretty good and they had just about every condiment you could imagine for hamburgers. We did end up spending more than I honestly care to spend on hamburgers. They do have barbeque too, so if we go again, we will have to try something else. 
     The onion rings were huge, though not the most seasoned I've had. But among the huge array of condiments at the counter, there was some horseradish sauce, so we just used some of that. They also had goldfish and animal crackers and that kept the baby happy until the food was ready. So, it was pretty good and we would probably try it again, but next time try something else.