The day we decided to go to SeaWorld my husband’s older brother came down to the condo for a couple of days to visit with us at the beach. He loves his nephews very much but he is single and has no kiddos so I was hoping he could handle our brand of chaos in a theme park. It was also crazy hot and humid that day and that always adds a extra layer to the parfait of nuttiness to our family.
We drove down and picked up BIL at the airport and then headed right to SeaWorld! We arrived and headed straight to the Shark Encounter. It was very nice but not wonderful. My 3 year old wanted to climb in the tank with the “little” sharks (around 12 inches maybe) so that was pretty funny. Our little sharkboy! We had a meltdown on the way out so we decided an early lunch might help with that. Off we went to Mama Stella’s Pizza Kitchen. BIL and I both got Eggplant Parmesan and a side salad. We got pizza and fruit for the kiddos and Hubby got a sampler with Cannelloni, Eggplant Parm and Ziti. The Eggplant was good with nice crispy edges and a decent sauce. The pizza was fairly basic but just fine for my boys. The fruit was in season and very fresh.
The boys perked up and we went on to see the Shamu show Believe. As I said before it was very hot the day we were there and the amphitheatre kind of intensifies the heat. There was no breeze where we were sitting and it was miserable. Now maybe it is set up that way since so many people get soaking wet watching the show but we just sat and sweated in our seats. My youngest guy fell asleep in the baby carrier on daddy so I was trying to keep a very overheated 3 year old calm while we waited for the show to start. He had never seen a whale so telling him we were going to see a whale jump didn’t really help. Once the show started it was a huge hit. It was very well done show. Basically four small acts, one of which calls Shamu out to splash everyone near the first 6 rows. My son loved it so much and was going on and on about whales that we bought the video and he still asks to watch it everyday. My son is behind in his speech so I love when he finds new words get so excited about using them.
We checked out many of the other animals and as it got later in the day we headed over to Sesame Street Bay of Play. My boys had a blast. They played in the water a bit, my older guy found a bunch of bouncing type areas that he did not want to leave. We waited in line to see Elmo and he was so excited. Elmo was very patient and cute with him. Just after this we went back to the bouncing areas my 3 year old got out of our sight for just about 30 seconds, maybe a minute. All of you parents out there know that is a long minute when you surrounded by a crowd and can't find your little one. I can honestly say I was screaming my son’s name and not one employee even took a second to see if we needed help or ask if we were ok. I KNOW that if that happened at a Disney park we would have had a CM helping us immediately. As it turned out he had gone back by Elmo and he was fine. Scared me very badly as I watch the boys so carefully but it goes to show it can happen to anyone no matter how careful you are. After mommy calmed herself down we got ice cream and headed back to the nice air-conditioned car.
We had a good day and BIL did very well for a first timer! I loved doing all of the different parks and seeing everything but I was counting down the days to Disney. I was so glad we saved it for last but it was hard not to compare everything to the very best. Also during all of this time I was doing my final training push for my half marathon. I was getting nervous and stressed that I would not finish. I had never run in a formal race before and was not sure what to expect. I am a planner girl so to not know how things might go was very hard for me.
Stay tuned for our first day at DLR.....
