So many books, so little time: Sea Lions, Sharkies, and Shamu

It's probably pretty obvious what we did today. If you said Sea World, go and get a gold star from your sticker drawer and put it on your forhead. Yay for Sea World!

But here is the thing: I kind of felt like I was at Lagoon, or the zoo. You know the feeling, all excited at first, looking at the dolphins (from a little distance; you don't want to be pushy!). You go and pet the sting rays, head to the Shamu show (almost the best display; I think the Arctic display with its bears and penguins trumps), and things kind of slowly peeter out. Where is the roller coaster (oh, yeah, being repaired.) By the time you get to the fresh water acquarium (which isn't much better than the the local PetsMart), your about ready to throw in the towel and go find the aircraft carrier museum, even if you did pay the equivalent of 1.5 weeks of groceries for tickets.

Am I sounding snobby? I hope not. Things did pick up, and like I said, Shamu was really, really cool. We sat in the soak zone, and though he did splash us twice, we weren't totally drenched by the end of the show. It was fun showing my kids something that I really couldn't see at home. But, it kind of felt like the zoo, or Lagoon, which are two places I enjoy for 2.5 seconds before wanting to go home and bath in some hand sanitizer. I'm just sayin...

So, today was fun. My kids had a ball. We were there on a perfect day: sunny, but not too hot, no lines, easy access to every display we wanted to see. I would say we saw all of Sea World today, and some of them we saw twice. Thomas loved the sting rays. He spent probably a half an hour at the end of the day, petting as many of them as he could, watching them glide through the water, as happy as he could possibly be. We rode the rapids ride, which got us all good and soaking wet, which was fun (though not fun when you step into the ultra air conditioned, bordering on freezing cold artic displays. Brrrr!) The kiddie play land entertained both Thomas and Ben for almost an hour, where they jumped on the giant bounce house, climbed ropes, ran through a field of punching bags (sounds more violent than it really was, I swear.) They will remember it all their lives, I'm sure.

The rest of the day was spent trying to find somewhere to eat for dinner, and bringing the kids home to the hotel. The ocean was calling to us, but there just wasn't time before the sun slipped over the horizen - I think it gets dark here faster. The boys fell asleep within minutes of each other, even Thomas, who never falls asleep without putting up a fight.

I think we succeded in wearing them out. It was a good, good day.

Now, for pictures...