How did we add a little girl to the family, finally? It was one of those adult/child conversations where Jadyn asked to come along, I told her to ask her mom and Lucy said, "SURE!" Well the joking turned serious and Graeme has a delightful buddy to follow.
So far we have done Sea World, the Magic Kingdom and Downtown Disney. More adventures will follow the rest of the week with Mike and Universal Studios and then 2 days of me and three kids while Mike is at his conference!
Here are our memories and stories from the first day of our trip-SEAWORLD.
We were so excited when we arrived to be greeted by Shamu. Jadyn warmed right up to him, while Graeme needed a high five first
Next we found the flamingoes. A little while later we actually saw a couple of workers walking a small flock of flamingoes around the park.
The sea turtles were our next stop. Liam looks a little groggy in most pictures as he is teething and has had a terrible runny nose our whole trip. It hasn't stopped him eating or laughing, but he does look a little bit pitiful in our pictures.
Graeme has really enjoyed having his big cousin Jadyn along and has followed her around everywhere doing what she does. It's been really sweet and fun to watch (especially the pillow fight this evening-pictures to arrive later)
The kids were fascinated by the stingrays. While we didn't do it, you could buy little trays of fish to feed the stingrays. We did pet a few and then found the stingray pups which were small and adorable. The kids loved it!
You could also buy food for the dolphins and feed them, which again we didn't do. Instead we just watched them swim and play close by. Graeme and Jadyn got a kick out of watching them (we were actually hit by some blow spray as one swam right by where the kids were standing)
We didn't go in to see the manatees (you could only take strollers so far and we wanted to make it to the Blue Horizons show) so we took a picture with the topiary one.
The Blue Horizons show inspired a lot of "WOW" and awe from the kids. We had great seats just out of the splash zone where we could watch the show.
The kids waited very patiently for the show to start.
Graeme read the map to pass some time
Liam was so excited for his first dolphin show
There were people acrobats
Divers
And the dolphins of course
Sometimes there were even people and dolphins doing tricks together (no longer true for the Shamu show)
It was amazing
After the show, we wandered over toward the penguins. Jadyn was so excited to see all the penguins-she loved the so much that she picked a little penguin snowglobe to take home to remember her trip.
Still journeying along toward the playground and lunch, we found the sharks and some shark teeth.
Finally found the playground and a picnic table. While I set up food, Mike took the big kids over to check out the Orca statue.
After lunch while the big kids and Mike climbed and played in the multilevel climby thing (3 stories), I took Liam over for a photo with the Shamu statue.
After they finished climbing, I switched kids with Mike and he took the camera. The big kids and I preceded to conquer all the rides of Shamu's Happy Harbor! First, we took on the swirling of the Swishy Fishies.
Next we rose and fell with the Flying Fiddler!
Graeme and Jadyn rode their first roller coaster!
And finally the high twirling Jazzy Jellies! Yes, we did them all!!!!
In the time before the Orca Show was slated to begin, we had just enough time to do an Arctic Adventure. It was crazy and crowded so I didn't get any pictures of our chilly adventure with Beluga Whales, a Polar Bear and some really, really big walruses.
As the afternoon continued on, the kids were beginning to fizzle (they had been up since 5 a.m.) and it was finally time for the Orca show.
By the middle of the show Liam will be asleep.
Once the popcorn was gone, the tiring Graeme began to meltdown.
Jadyn remained all smiles but was getting tired and joined Graeme and mommy outside with the bubble man as they just couldn't quite make it through the whole show.
We made sure that Mike got to watch the whole show since it was his first time at SeaWorld. They no longer have the trainers in the pool at any time with the whales and the large orca is not in the show either. Instead a baby whale born last October joins his mom in the show. It was still amazing and fun to see.
After the show, we headed out. Jadyn and I did a little shopping and by the time we got to the car just a few minutes later, Graeme and Liam were already asleep. Jadyn soon followed and the three kids took a nice nap. Mommy followed up by heading to bed by 7:30 so that we could all be refreshed and ready for Tuesday and the MAGIC KINGDOM!
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