Sea World!

Since the girls had a long weekend (due to Teacher's Convention), we decided to take a vacation to San Diego. We drove down on Wednesday afternoon and headed to Sea World on Thursday morning. It was a beautiful day in San Diego, although it was a bit warmer than we had expected. Since we were there on a Thursday, it was very quiet and we didn't have to wait in a single line. We felt very spoiled, but we certainly didn't complain!

(Don't forget - if you want to see pictures larger, just click on them. You'll get a much better view of some of the animals that way).

Here we are just inside the entrance of Sea World.

giant sea turtles...

at the tide pools...

flamingos out for a stroll...

Dolly the dolphin soars during the dolphin show...

the spinning sea star ride... can you tell Allie wasn't too sure about it? (she gets that hesitancy from her mother!).

Nathan on the spinning ride...

near an amazing play area for the kids...

waiting for the Shamu show...

We LOVED the Shamu show! The trainers have such obvious affection for these beautiful animals. They dove with the whales, rode on the whales, and soared with them, too! It was incredible. I actually cried because the show was so beautiful. During the show, Nathan turned to me and said, "This is the best day of my entire life!" He has now decided that he wants to be a Shamu trainer when he grows up! Needless to say, we came home with a stuffed Shamu.

There were so many other highlights of Sea World that I didn't photograph. We loved the penguin encounter, and were amazed by the walruses, polar bears and beautiful white beluga whales in the Arctic exhibit. We walked through the shark encounter exhibit three times. A tunnel actually goes right through the shark tank, so you have huge sharks swimming all around you and right over you! You get quite a view of their teeth!! The kids were also impressed with the Clydesdale horses (so tall!) and the pet show that we attended. They definitely had some talented cats, dogs and even pigs! All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our day at Sea World. We ended up going back on Friday night, which was Halloween. The kids got to "trick or treat" as we walked around and we got to see a nighttime Shamu show. We made some very special memories!