Friday, January 2, 2009

Sea World!

We got year passes to Sea World for Christmas, and we went today! Anna had never been and Jonathan had not been since I was pregnant with Anna. He had not even turned two yet! Dave kept asking him today, do you remember this, do you remember that? Ummmm, nooooo.
We had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect, and the kids stayed there for six hours with not even one single fit! Jonathan walked the whole day, since we only have a single umbrella stroller left. He did really well with all that walking, and standing in lines. Although, the lines were minimal. We watched a Sesame Street show that was really cute. It starred Elmo, Abby, Rosita, Cookie Monster, and Grover. I think Anna was a little intimidated by the giant characters, because she turned to me with huge blue eyes and whispered, "They aren't real!"as she scampered onto my lap and snuggled in close. When Rosita ran off the stage and slid across the empty row of seats in front of us, Anna almost jumped off the seat! She did not cry, but her heart was going a mile a minute. Poor thing! (To be honest, it really startled me!) Jonathan and Dave just acted nonchalant, like giant furry blue puppets jump in their faces on a daily basis. I actually asked Jonathan, Did you see Rosita? He replied, Um, yeah, I did! (His tone said, what do you think I am, Mama? Blind? I'm five years old and completely unimpressed with Sesame Street!) I think he enjoyed it though. Dave was dancing quite a bit in his seat, so I know he was feeling it. We ate a yummy lunch outside by the water. I could actually enjoy eating outside for once because they had fencing up to keep the seagulls from badgering us and pooping on the tables. We told the kids that they could choose to either go on the flamingo paddle boats, or up on the tower (the spinning thing that goes up in the sky so you can see the whole park). They both chose the tower. Actually, Jonathan put it this way: I am NOT going on THOSE boats. I am NEVER going to do THAT. (I am not sure why he felt so strongly about it, but I was actually relieved, because the paddle boats are like exercise, and I got enough of that walking around all day.) I had been talking about going to Sea World all week to the kids, really building it up. I focused specifically on feeding the seals and sea lions little fish, which to me is one of the highlights of a day at Sea World! There's something a little disgusting yet thrilling about touching dead cold fish and throwing them to huge sea mammals! Sort of a little Fear Factor aspect to it. Anyways, my brother Cory ate marinated anchovies while he was in town. This made quite an impression on my two kids, since they had never seen a human pop an entire intact fish in their mouth! They kept saying, we are going to get little fishies like Uncle Coco eats, and feed them to those seals! So I bought two trays, which is either 6 or 8 fish (and yes, they looked almost exactly like the ones Cory enjoys) so that there would be plenty for us all to feed the seals! Anna and Dave both looked at me like, are you kidding me? We aren't touching that! Jonathan really tried to touch one. I've got to give him some credit. He reached out and tried to take it from me, but he just could not quite muster up the will to wrap his fingers around the fish. They need to come up with something a little more desirable (to people unlike Cory) to feed the seals, like fish biscuits, or pollock patties or something. There was a mama seal that had a baby seal who was just nursing away! Needless to say, that seal got almost all of my fish. I only fed one or two to a braying sea lion to get it to shut up for a second. I felt so much empathy for that seal! Poor thing, has to stay on that rock and feed her demanding little baby (Man, I thought Anna was rough with me! Thank goodness we aren't seals!) all day while all the other seals and sea lions are free to roam about and beg for all the fish they want! It just hardly seemed fair! (I am sure the people around me thought I was insane, and I guess I was over-sympathizing a little with this seal, but I really felt for her!)
Another great moment was when we went to the Polar Express Experience. They turned the area with the polar bears and the walrus and the beluga whales into the North Pole! It was so beautifully decorated and they were even pumping Christmas smells into the air, like cookies and pine trees. Santa was there and everything. It was really awesome. We went in after watching the movie, and Anna was like, We in the North Pole now! And she said, Is this really real? This is really real! It was so cute! The coolest thing we saw all day was two employees go scuba diving with the belugas. They had to clean the tank with a vacuum and scrub brush, and also do some repair work on the drain. Jonathan was completely enthralled. I mean how cool is this: people breathing under water, using tools, and huge whales swimming around them and playing with the vacuum hose the whole time! At one point, one of the belugas actually swam down and put one of the divers ENTIRE HEAD in her mouth! The diver just froze until the whale swam away and then carried on with her work like it was nothing. The trainer explained to the crowd that they are working on getting the belugas used to having the divers in there, so they never react to anything the belugas may do to them. Because they don't want to encourage the belugas to play in this way (and accidentally harm one of the divers!)
That takes some serious willpower! A spider crawled on me in a canoe once and I flipped out and jumped in a river where I had seen some alligators earlier that day! It was totally irrational and I know that an alligator is more dangerous than a spider! I would never have the willpower to just stay calm when I was breathing underwater and a freaking whale bites my head! It was crazy, but very entertaining to watch.
We went and saw the Clydesdale horses, walked through the barn that reeked of horses, and exclaimed over how enormous they were, and when we left, Jonathan said, what horses? I never saw the horses. That's when I thought, it is time to just go home! That is one tired kid who does not even notice huge horses.
I think the total highlight of the day for me was that I got to take Jonathan on his first roller coaster ride. He realized that I was the one that really wanted to go, but I needed a kid to go with me, since it was in the kiddie section of the park. He looked up at me in the line, and said, I'm so glad you have a 5-year old! And I told him I was so glad I had a 5-year old too. He was really scared, he kept squeezing my hand tighter, and before we were finally going to get on, his little hand was all cold and clammy. I screamed the whole time! The picture they snapped of us is funny, I am shrieking (in delight!) and I have my arms wrapped tight around Jonathan (I think the safety restraint system they had in place just didn't seem good enough to me!). When we landed, he said, That was cool! And then he said, I did not scream at all! Later he thought about it and said, Next time we go on that, I'm gonna scream the whole time.
Jonathan and Anna both say their favorite part of the day was the penguins.

3 comments:

Lara Anne Morgan said...

Sounds like you guys had a great day! Almost as much fun as we will all have on our Disney cruise!! We went to Downtown Disney today--we had a great time, the kids were spoiled and we went to the T-Rex restaurant which was pretty cool. Love you, miss you!

Anonymous said...

You forgot about the random lady who gave the kids stuffed animals. And about the 3 story tall net thing that we all tried to climb, but gave up after 10 feet. And the the kiddie tea cup ride that made me a little sick. I'm glad Jonathan is 5 now too, because he can ride rides with you and I don't have to.

Little Gliddens said...

you and Dave are too funny!
you completely cracked me up about the Whale, seriously who could do that???
Glad you had fun! Miss you! hope we can get together soon!