SeaWorld!

Last week we took our first trip to SeaWorld. I have to admit that I was nervous about it, and I seriously over prepared because of that, but we had the kind of time that made us want to go on another trip some time soon. That alone, my friends, tells me that we had a fantastic time. lol. Plus, it's a good thing we had fun as our tickets were buy one admission, get another admission free. Hopefully we'll get to do a SeaWorld Part 2 sometime this summer.

Anyway, we decided to head out on Wednesday night after Isaac got home from work and we had dinner. We didn't tell the boys where we were going until we were in the car and on our way. All they knew was that we were going to stay in a hotel. That was enough for them, I tell you. In their eyes, hotels equal happiness. (You know, because they are quite the experienced travelors and all having stayed in hotels a sum total of two times in their LIVES. Ahem.)

We were fortunate enough to get a room with two queen beds and a pull out couch. Try as I might to get Jason to sleep on the couch, he was not convinced, so we ended up with this arrangement here:

Shawn and Jason together on one bed,
Isaac on the pull out couch, and
Jack and I on the other queen bed.

Like I said before, the boys were thrilled to get the chance to sleep together! Isaac was not as thrilled to sleep on the pull out. Jack was not thrilled to sleep at all. Needless to say, the night was not a whole lot of fun for the big people.

(As an aside, we were not upset when the big boys decided they did not want to sleep together again the second night. I got creative with the pull out couch's mattress and put it on the floor between the two queens. My thought was that we could corral Jack there for the night because he was not fun to sleep with at all, but Jason decided he wanted to sleep there instead. That left Shawn and I in one bed and Isaac and Jack in the other. Sadly, there are no pictures of my brilliance, though. I was too tired to think ahead on that one. lol. The good news is that everyone was so exhausted that we slept like rocks. It was a MUCH better night for all!)

Thursday morning, Jack woke up and continued his mission to be on the phone at every opportunity. He loved that thing!

Shall I order room service for us?

We had a little room service for breakfast--the boys were impressed by that, too--before we drove to SeaWorld.

We started out in the Turtle Reef.

The turtles were huge!

Shawn and Jason were telling daddy all about the turtles.

 



Outside of that attraction is the "Riptide Rescue" boat. Jason loved it here. He would have loved to have played in that boat for the rest of the afternoon, I think.

 



He played with all of the other little kids.

Shawn played on the sand.

Where should we go, mommy?
Don't hit the turtle up ahead, Jay!

Whew. We almost ran into daddy, Shawn, and the turtle!

We watched Shamu in his pool for a while. Shawn loved watching the two Orcas swim around.

See it, mommy! It's so big!

Look at that one!

They were pretty impressive swimming around in their pool.

We watched the dolphins play with their basketballs. Jason definitely thought that was pretty neat.

Jack was pretty "meh" about the dolphins. He felt pretty "meh" about being in the stroller, too. He wanted to be OUT and RUNNING all over the place. I was a kill joy and nixed his plan.

I'm over the dolphins, mom.

Then we got to learn about the sea lions. This one was nice enough to pose for us.

Go ahead. Take my picture. I know I'm large and in charge.

We went to the Sea Lions Live show. It was pretty nice because we had a little area to the side all to ourselves. We were able to let everyone play and run around a bit during the show. 

 

Let me out of this thing!

Daddy showed Shawn how to use his new Shamu puppet.

Jason like playing with his dolphin puppet.

 

I can still hardly believe it happened, but Shawn saw Bert and insisted we go talk to him! Yes, I know! This boy who didn't want to see Santa or the Easter Bunny fell in love with Bert. I think he would have stayed there talking to Bert all day long. It was true love.

 



Mom, I love Bert!

He was so proud of himself after talking to Bert.

 

Mommy, I need to go back and give Bert a message!
Tell him I love him!

I knew before we left that Jack was going to be interesting to control on our trip. He could be classified as a runner, you see. I am not the best chaser. It would be a problem. So I bought him a harness. (I'm always thinking, see.) Unfortunately, the harness broke not even five minutes after I put it on him! I was so sad!

I think Jack's favorite part of the day was at the Sesame Street Bay of Play. He loved the water area.

He wanted to grab the water so bad. He'd get close and the
water would shoot to another fountain. lol. He just kept chasing it
trying to get the water. Too funny!

Me trying to take him away. Him looking longingly back at the fountain.

Still trying to distract him as we made for the exit...

Needless to say, he wasn't happy when we had to leave. lol.

Making a mad dash back to the water area.
We have lots of pictures of him running when he was out of his stroller. Sigh

Daddy and the big boys in the muscle mirror.

We walked through an arcade on our way out of the Sesame Street Bay of Play. Jason spied a car arcade game. He desperately wanted to play it.

Driving his red and white car in the race.

He focused on running things over with the car. Lol.
When this boy gets his license, we all need to stay off the roads.

While Jason was driving, Shawn got to play a game, too. He won a frog! (The best I could do was get a picture of the game itself. Clearly, I need more arms.)

Then we had a little snack.

This is so fun, mommy!

Jack finally took a little nap.

Daddy and Jason.

We took another detour by the rescue boat...

before heading to the penguins.

Jason thought the penguins were pretty cool. Get it? Cool? Ba dum, dum.

Jason and I in our penguin suits.

We had some time to kill before Shamu's show, so the boys played in the grass.

 

Jason tried to perfect his rabbit hunting skills.
He was not successful.

Shawn and daddy walked around and stretched their legs.

A quick snuggle between Jack and daddy.

Our last stop was the Shamu show.

So beautiful!

Shawn and Jack really loved the show. Jason thought it was neat, too, but Shawn and Jack really liked it.

Jack clapped and laughed every time they jumped out of the water.

Shawn's eyes were glued to the water.

Daddy and the boys as the show ended.

"Ta dah! The show is over," said Jack.

Before we called it a night, each got a souvenir from SeaWorld. Jack got a stuffed Shamu. Jason chose a small box of sharks. Shawn selected small figures of Bert and Ernie. :)

A random shot of Jason watching the cars
 leave the parking lot at the hotel.

So there you have it, our trip to Santiago and SeaWorld!