Saturday, August 2, 2014

anniversary at sea world

Chris asked what I wanted to do for our wedding anniversary the other day, and we had the "I don't know, what do you want to do," conversation. Finally he said, "How about Sea World?" This is a nice thing for him to offer because he doesn't really care for Sea World, and he knows I love it.
 The kids were excited. Since moving to The Swamp three years ago, we've pretty much always celebrated our anniversary with our kids. Josh said, "Yay, we're going to Sea World for our anniversary!" (I loved that he said our)
Sea World has changed in the decade since I last saw it in California. The dolphin show used to have more dolphin tricks, but now it has more trainer/acrobat tricks/dancing. And lots of "save the world" propaganda everywhere. But it was still fun to watch the dolphin tricks they still performed.
 This guy kept catching birds as part of the dolphin show. He was standing right next to me.
 Chris and I took turns going on the rides with the kids. He went on the loopy roller coasters, I went on the less-crazy rides. Josh says the boat ride IS a crazy ride, but I think he secretly liked it.
 This cool aquarium had sharks and fish in the ceiling and floor, not just the walls.
 Our fancy (and expensive) anniversary lunch. Dinner was even fancier, we ate at Wendy's on the way home.
Unfortunately, we sat in the splash zone at the Shamu show, and the announcer kept saying how wet we were going to get. I put my camera in a plastic bag to be safe, so I didn't get any good pictures of Shamu, they were all blurry and foggy from inside a sandwich bag. And...we didn't even get wet at all.
The shark tunnel is one of my favorite things at Sea World. Too bad my camera takes bad indoor pictures.
We didn't actually see live penguins -- for some reason the penguin place always had a huge hour or more wait, and we came back several times to see if the line had died down, but it never did. Must have been an amazing place for that many people to stand in line all day long.
 My camera's battery died right after I took the picture of the giant matinee, so I didn't get a better shot of the matinees and giant turtles swimming underwater, or a picture of Ashley and I petting a dolphin (who looked like it was going to bite my hand), or all of us petting a sting ray. We didn't get a picture of the acrobat show we had to run watch due to a quick tropical lighting storm that passed through.
Before we left, Ashley's newly discovered passion for roller coasters made her want to ride the Manta ray coaster again. Chris said he already went on it and it was my turn (we both used to love roller coasters, but realized in the last few years that we're old -- they aren't fun anymore, and 2 coasters is about our limit). I reluctantly agreed. You can't tell in this picture, but the seats tip down so your body is horizontal, and pretty much fly face down the entire way. It wasn't as bad as I imagined, but it was still too loopy for my enjoyment.
So we left the park and ate our fancy anniversary dinner at Wendy's, and then headed home. It was a fun way to spend our anniversary with our family, and have one last big adventure before moving. Now...on to packing.

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