Jay Honeck wrote:
San Antonio is nice, and we have friends to visit there, but I'm
looking for alternate suggestions.

It sounds like you've been to SA before, and you may get in trouble with
the kids for inadvertently exposing them to something educational while
on break, but the Alamo is an interesting place to visit. It was
interesting in at least two ways to me: first, because it was the site
of a battle, and second, because of people's reactions to it. When I
was there, I noticed that the visitors seemed to fall into two broad
categories. One group was reading all of the displays, taking photos,
discussing the history with each other, etc: the "tourists". The other
group took off their hats as soon as they came in the door, moved around
silently, and generally acted like they were in church: the "native
Texans".

Any other Gulf coast destination recommendations?

My grandparents spent many winters in the Harlingen/Pharr area and we
visited them over Christmas once. We left Missouri with snow and ice on
the ground, and arrived in Harlingen to 65 degrees and grandparents who
were apologizing for how cold it was. This was about 20 years ago, but
I remember that we went over to the beach on South Padre Island and it
was quite nice. We flew commercial, so I don't know about the airports
in the area.

Matt Roberds