San Antonio, Texas

This weekend, my wonderful wife planned a special getaway, to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary.  Even though you see a lot of travel from the pages of this blog - my wife and I don't get many opportunities to travel alone.  We were REALLY luck to have my son and his wife live just a few hours away, and they agreed to take care of the kids while we were gone.  What a treat! We headed toward San Antonio, Texas.

We started the trip with a stop at the San Antonio LDS Temple.  It's a small, but gorgeous structure - both inside and out.

Because the temple is about 90 minutes away, we don't get many chances to attend together (that would be at least 6 hours of babysitting).  We usually take turns attending...so it was a thrill to be able to go together.  We participated in sealings...and it was spiritually moving to know that we had a part in creating some eternal families.  I can't explain just how much we appreciated this - and were uplifted by the experience.

Next stop was a surprise - at least to me ; )  Located just 6 miles away from the temple is the JW Marriott San Antonio Resort.  It's an incredible site:

Too pretty to be from my camera phone ; )

This is a resort, in every sense of the word.  It is located in Texas' Hill Country - a peaceful and beautiful location on acres and acres of land.  They've done a great job of keeping it very "green" - meaning environmentally friendly.

The view from our room should tell you that this place caters to families in a big way:

The swimming "area" is 6 acres alone!  It includes waterslides, an adult pool, kid pool, a "lazy river" the runs around the entire area, relaxation pool, bars, cafes...it's really big.  It looked like a LOT of fun!

Just to the left of this, you can see a couple of holes from one of the golf courses.  The JW Marriott actually has two of them ; )  They're both TPC courses, with one used for the AT&T Open and the other used for a Senior PGA tournament.

You can also see a view of the Hill Country in this shot

We took a walk around the central swimming area...here are a couple of pictures to show you the slides and lazy river up-close:

We didn't realize just how many families would be there.  The good thing is that they have activities planned for kids...all day long.  Here's a little video of one of the activities...they call this the "Human Hamster":

During our weekend away, we took advantage of the time to actually see a couple of movies ; )  Not the most glamorous activity, but something we don't have a chance to do without babysitters.  We were lucky enough to find an Alamo Drafthouse Theater that was only a couple of miles away.  This is a theater chain that we adore:

Both movies were great - another treat!  While at the resort, we had so much fun together.  We tried our hand at a few activities.  We played tennis together:

My wife is infinitely better at tennis, but we still had a lot of fun.  It's the first time I was able to play any sport that required hands, since my surgery.

We also took advantage of a guided tour through the Hill Country - on mountain bikes!  This was really fun - we rode around the JW Marriott property, and then through the wilderness preserve on some pretty rocky trails.  It was a really good workout, and we learned quite a bit about the flora and fauna in the area:

Overall, we had a fantastic time.  We are lucky to have family that can help us to celebrate our anniversary in a unique way.  We're also lucky to have each other, and weekends like these only help remind us of this fact.

Now, it's time to get back home and see those wonderful kids!