Sea World

We went to Sea World on Friday. It was stinking awesome! It was actually super hot and really humid and muggy, but we had a great time anyhow. The first thing we did was see the sting rays. Stephen is obsessed with them. We bought a tray of food and fed them, getting them to come over and touching their weird skin.

Dolphins had a HUGE line, so we didn't go up to where we could touch them on Friday. Brian and the boys went back on Saturday though, while I was at a stamp convention, and they bought fish and fed the fish to the dolphins.

We saw everything. They loved everything. It was so fun to see all those animals through the eyes of our children.

Ethan is terrified of sea lions! I think it's because they were constantly barking at us, they are loud ya know. Here's pics of that:

I loved this bird, there were lots like him, but he was the fluffiest one.
I was worried he was gonna fall out! I guess he knows what he's doing.

We saw sharks and that was great. Ethan said the sharks were "friendly, happy" I think because from under them in that shark tube you can go in it sorta looks like they are smiling. In any event I found it funny that he was afraid of sea lions but friendly about sharks. In with the sharks they have tons of fish too. Also it's cool in there. One thing about Sea World is it's cool in most of the exhibits so that is nice.

We saw penguins and puffins. Stephen calls puffins, "puffy penguins". It's really cold in there with those.

Then we looked at the killer whale. There was a show, but this is us at the little side viewing thing where you can go up to the glass. The boys were AMAZED with the whale. This particular whale is Tilly.

There is a section called Shamu's Happy Harbor. We spent a lot of time there. It's a lot of kiddy rides. Here is Ethan on the Merry-Go-Round.
And here are the guys on a spinning type ride.
Stephen on the Shamu rollercoaster. Super fun! Ethan wasn't tall enough for it though.
Here we are on some tilting back and forth boat type ride.
After we were leaving that area this girl came up. She was about 12. She had won in the carnival area two killer whales. She gave one to Stephen. He almost cried he was so happy. Ethan fell in love with it and Stephen gave it to Ethan. He does still refer to it as "My Killer Whale" but he lets Ethan hold it all the time.

At the Shamu show shortly after Ethan used his new killer whale to act out the tricks the big whales did.

We had some excitement in our show. A whale would not do it's tricks. It also would not leave the main tank! So they paused for a few minutes, but still no luck getting that whale out. So they said, "listen, this animal weighs 9,000 lbs. We can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do, show's over, come back later to the next show" And so we had to leave! haha.

Me and the kids did go back to the night show. Brian took that time to ride lots of rides while the lines were short. EVERYONE goes to the night Shamu show. I got totally lost getting back to where Brian was because it was almost time for fireworks and they close some of the paths off. It took me an hour to get to him! SHEESH.

So like I mentioned they went again on Saturday. Apparently they had an awesome time. I was at a rubber stamp convention meeting friends and stamping celebrities. After my stamp show Brian and the boys picked me up. We went to dinner with a friend of Brian's. After dinner the friend brought the boys this:

Can you see how big that killer whale is? It's HUGE. They love it to bits. Every morning Stephen gets up and goes potty in our bathroom. He brings his puppies *you know puppies right, go everywhere with us two of them, one pink one blue*. Well Sunday morning I wake up to him grunting. I look up and he's dragging this HUGE killer whale into the bathroom! HAHA.

One bad thing though. I left Ethan's blankie in the hotel! We actually really liked our hotel. It was nice and clean and in a good area and quiet and that's all we really ask of a hotel. So we were very pleased. Not so much anymore. It's TOTALLY my fault I left the blankie. They are not helping me get it back at all though. They won't ship it and charge us, they won't fill out UPS or FEDEX forms for me if I arrange to have UPS or FEDEX come to pick it up. Oh and UPS and FEDEX were total butts about that, apparently "go get my blanket and bring it to me, charge me whatever you want" is a service they only offer business customers. Sigh. SO I'm mailing an empty priority mail box to the hotel. Inside the box is a return label I printed off paypal that has our stuff to ship it back. I talked to the post office and this should work. The hotel "guesses" they can be bothered to tape the box back for me, as I can't mail an open box. SHEESH. I'll let you all know if/when we get blankie back. Meanwhile Ethan is crying himself to sleep for almost an hour a night. It is very sad.