San Diego Trip: Sea World...

For Christmas last year, Bob & Sharon gave all of us a trip to San Diego.  We finally made our trip happen a few weeks ago, and it was fantastic!  We were there for 3 days and packed in plenty!  On our first day there we went to Sea World and had a great time.  It started raining on us quite a bit after lunch, but we managed to see pretty much everything in spite of the weather.  There are a TON of pictures here, beware...

These walrus pictures aren't great, but they hold special memories for us!  This walrus was HILARIOUS!  He kept coming up to the glass right next to the kids.  Ruby and Charlie were terrified, but the rest of us got the biggest kick out of it.  I don't think I had ever really seen a walrus swim before...crazy!  They are HUGE!  The other funny thing about this walrus is that Ruby pointed to it and said, "dada!" (Sorry Jay :) But in Jay's defense, I heard Ruby use the "dada" sound to refer to multiple things, not just exclusively her dad ;)...

Grandma Sharon teaching Henry the finer points of map reading!

Love this one...

I was determined to get a good picture of the 3 kids this weekend.  Here was attempt #1.  Obviously not "good" but they were all in there...

 I think these 2 are so cute in this sequence of pictures...

More map reading...

 Check out that sea turtle.  Charlie LOVED these...

Uncle Jay trying to teach the Wiebe boys about the joys of cotton candy...neither of them liked it, much to their father's relief :)

Charlie fell asleep in my lap during the sea lion show...

Ruby loves Elmo, so Grandpa Bob took Henry and Ruby to take pictures with him while Charlie slept. And, it was after this picture that the worst part of our trip happened.  I lost Henry for about 3 minutes in the Sesame Street kids area.  I think I can honestly say those were the worst 3 minutes of my life.  Luckily we found him in the climbing area, he had just taken it upon himself to walk over there, but still no less terrifying.  I hope that never happens again. ever.

Watching the dolphins with their trainers...

Petting the bat rays...

And the last thing we did was watch the Whale show, which was actually really sort of boring.  It wasn't that the whales weren't impressive, they were, of course, but it was more that the show included an overabundance of material on their big screen TV's.  Totally could have been better.  It was also raining pretty hard by this point, so after the show, we were MORE than happy to head for the hotel :)

 And that was Day 1.  Our San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park trips will follow this post (when I get around to them, of course :)