A great day at Sea World, San Antonio

We hadn't made up our minds if we were actually going to drive to San Antonio to go to Sea World until kind of the last minute this morning ~ but Andrew was on the internet, checked the weather, got tickets arranged, and we headed on out at about 10:00 a.m.! I'm so glad we did, because we had the best time! It was a bit misty, windy and cool today, so it was less crowded and crazy at the park ... very good!
Jackson was pretty excited to see the whales, so our first stop was the show, "Believe," over at Shamu Theatre.
Mr. Jones and I and Sabrina were taking pictures today, and I think we shot about 500 between us ~ we got some really nice pictures!
We deliberately were not sitting in the SPLASH ZONE ... mostly because the air was quite cool and we didn't want the little ones to be chilled ... but folk who were sitting in the lower bleechers really got soaked!
The theme of the show was about following your dreams ... one of the trainers there told the story of how as a little girl she really wanted to become an aquatic animal trainer ~ so this job was a dream come true for her. It was a really nice show that started out thanking and saluting all of our servicemen and their families.

Olivia wanted to ride the STEEL EEL, one of the biggest roller coasters in the park. Andrew enthusiastically accompanied her and tried to talk a few of us into going with him ... no deal! Look at them in the picture below ~ can you see them? Olivia is wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, and Andrew has on a blue t-shirt. Olivia looks terrified!

And then Sabrina got talked into taking the plunge with Andrew. They are in the last car, first seat (below) ~ I couldn't zoom in quite as well on them.
Then we walked over to Beluga Stadium to see the dolphin show that had a bunch of cool acrobatic stunts in it as well ... Mr. Jones got great pictures of the acrobats, but we had too many pictures to upload to show you those ... I mainly wanted to show you the dolphins and other sea creatures.
Karis really enjoyed herself today! Sabrina packed juice along for the kids, and we snacked on popcorn and giant pretzels and all kinds of other stuff that was there at the park. We had a lot of fun.
We had walked by Shamu's Happy Harbor, with a children's-sized roller coaster, and Jackson BEGGED to go on it. This was going to be Jackson's very first roller coaster ride EVER! See his happy face below? He is wearing a red shirt, has a HUGE smile, and Andrew is in the blue shirt with his hands raised high (so we could see them!).

Then we went to see the Rockin' Ski Party with power boats, ski-do's, barefoot stunts, pyramids and ski jumps ... it was a very fun show to see ~ we were sitting in the SPASH ZONE and all of us got soaked by the ski do's as they came by. I moved to higher ground to protect my camera!
This is how everyone looked right before getting soaked ...
Next, we went over to the Sea Lion Stadium to watch "The Cannery Row Caper" a very funny show with Clyde and Seamore (seals) investigating a mystery of some missing fish ...
This was my favorite show of the day. The seals were incredibly cute and the performance was just funny from start to finish.

It turns out that this little weasel ~ actually this is a river otter according to Suz (my personal editor) and Sabrina agrees ~ was stealing and hiding all of the fish and causing a lot of trouble on Cannery Row ...

Look at this HUGE walrus! Don't we have the best pictures of animals?! I've got to get serious about making an alphabet animal book for the grandchildren! Since Olivia wanted to do one of the water rides, she and Andrew split from the rest of us for awhile. We walked over to see the penguins and puffins playing ...
Karis took a comfortable nap in the stroller while we saw a bunch of different animals ...
We stayed for awhile at Alligator Alley to watch the animals there. We saw a bunch of beautiful turtles (not pictured) and a ton of alligators ... look at his teeth!

Look at this beautiful pelican! Don't you wish you were with us today? ME TOO!

Cutie Karis didn't sleep too long ... she was exhausted from all of the excitement and just needed a few winks ...
We spent quite a bit of time at Dolphin Cove where you can watch the dolphin swim around. We were hoping one would come close enough to us so we could touch it, but we didn't get that lucky today.
We also walked through Clydesdale Hamlet and saw the beautiful horses there ... you know, the ones that are in those commercials for Anheuser-Busch.
I like this picture of Sabrina and Jackson :)
We spent the entire day here at Sea World! What a fun day with so much to see and do!
We just had one last place to see before leaving the park ~ The Coral Reef and the Sharks!
Grandpa Jones took these great pictures of the sharks ... whew ... I would not want to meet one of these guys while swimming, would you?
We finally left the park at about 7:00 and drove back to Austin. What a great day! We plan to go to church tomorrow morning and worship the great God who created every living thing ... and then we're going to just rest, take some walks, go to the neighborhood park and do some quiet activities the rest of the day!