Sea World!

Since moving to Austin, we are constantly learning from other Austinites about things we should do, places we should see and go. Most of the time our answer is, "We'll try that when it gets cooler!"

Well...Austin has been strangely reminiscent of Tucson this summer, in it's oven-baking heat and sun (I think we've only seen rain twice since we moved here!). It has cooled down a bit - we're more in the upper 80's than in the 100's now - but still isn't quite fall enough.

All that to say that Sea World in San Antonio (a mere 2 hours away from our house) was definitely on the list of Things To Do. We'd been talking about it a lot lately, and had decided on last weekend. It turned out to be even better timing when we learned that Olivia was the Star of the Week in her preschool class, and thus got to take home Dangles, the class stuffed monkey. Each child does something fun with Dangles and then takes pictures and a story back to the class on the following Monday...so we thought, Why not? Sea World with Dangles, it is!

This is at the entrance to the park. Notice Dangles with Olivia. He will be in most of the pictures. :P

Meeting Shamu! She was not even a little bit afraid of the huge walking killer whale...

We actually got to the park about 30min early, but they still let people in. We went first to the dolphin area, where we thought it would be fun to feed the dolphins. Turns out, we didn't need to feed them - they came right up to the side of the pool and let you pet them! It was pretty awesome. The dolphins reminded Levi and I of puppy dogs...they just had this "pet me! pet me! love me! love me!" demeanor about them. I'm glad I got this picture of Olivia touching one of them, because right after that one came up out of the water right in her face and scared her...she didn't want to pet them after that!

It's hard to see it under the water, but that's a sting ray she's touching. Very squishy!

In the middle of the park was the Sesame Street Bay of Play. I'm not sure what Seasame Street was doing in Sea World, but it's a match made in heaven for little kids. There were lots of smaller, kid-sized rides,which Olivia loved. This is Levi and Olivia riding on the Shamu Roller Coaster. We were worried that she'd get scared, since it went pretty fast, even for a kiddie-coaster. But no. Apparently the only thing she was afraid of was the dolphin. :P

Olivia, Dangles, and I on the Merry Go Round. She's pretty excited.

This was a ferris wheel made of little egg-shaped cups. It as also the only ride I was able to go on (other than the Merry Go Round) with Olivia due to being preggers. :) It was fun, but not fast enough for Olivia. She stood up at the top and said, "Can I get off now? I want to do something else." Oy.

Good thing daddys have strong shoulders, because girls get tired after all that walking!

Ice cream! which, of couse, was shared with Dangles. :)

This was one of those boat rides that swings fast back and forth. Now, look closely at the second-to-last row of seats. That's Levi and Olivia. Do you see her hands? They're up in the air like on a roller coaster. Did we teach her this? No. Are we in trouble when she's a teenager? Yes.

I had to include this picture to show that no matter where you take a child - and no matter what the cost of admission - they can be perfectly happy playing on a playground. Forget the dolphins, whales, otters, sea lions. Give the girl a rope ladder and a slide, and she's happy! I think we spent an hour there, which allowed her to get out a lot of energy, me to sit down for a while, and Levi and I both to have heart attacks trying to keep her in our line of sight. It is quite scary how easily you could lose a child in a place like Sea World.

We saw three shows during the day, and this is the last one - Shamu! I wanted to include this one because it has Baby Shamu jumping with his mommy. Awww. He was so cute.

And that's it! We had a lot of fun, saw lots of animals, bought a lot of expensive park food, and walked about 5 miles. No one got hurt, and to Levi and I's enormous relief, made it back to the car at the end of the day without losing Dangles even once. :)