San Diego - The Thrilling Conclusion

Thursday. Although the families had already decided to go to Legoland while we were on this trip, Sheri and I sent each other a few furtive messages about Sea World.  Sea World was literally right across the bay from our beach house - not a 10 minute drive away.  (Every night we were able to watch the Sea World fireworks from our patio.) I had really great memories of that place as a kid and I knew my children would love being there as much as I had.  As we pondered what other things we'd like to do in San Diego, we realized more and more that we just really wanted to go. So....we did.  I confess that I was hoping that another sibling or two would join us but no one had interest.  I also confess that I'm so super glad we went.  It was an absolutely lovely day, with a much more peaceful atmosphere than Legoland.  We spent the day hopping onto roller coasters with almost no lines, enjoying several shows, marveling at the amazing animals, and completely slathering our children with sunscreen every half hour or so.  Also we bought Bitty the hugest sunhat we could find and it did an excellent job of shading her entire body as well as the shoulders of anyone sitting next to her.

The sealions put on the cutest shows

We did lose Siena for an alarming 20 minutes or so - She was super brave and was safely reunited with her mother at at the Lost Children booth

I think my kids were most enchanted by the dolphins - it was quite breathtaking to be allowed to be so close to them.  Cap revisited them several times and sort of left his heart there I think.  When we left the park, two of our three children were declaring that they wanted to study marine biology in college.

I have clear memories of feeding the sealions when I was a kid - it was fun to see that attraction still available to my own kids, although the birds were a little hard to fend off.

Another fabulous exhibit was a large shallow pool of bat rays which were much more interactive than any sting rays we've come across at our local aquarium.  I'm sure that's partly because you can feed these rays and so they were perfectly willing to come up to us all.  We didn't feed them but we all got to touch them plenty.  What a cool experience.

Here's Cap back at the dolphin pool during play time, tossing giant doggie toys to the dolphins.

It may be hard to see here, but baby Iva just loves Cap and she loved holding his hand as we walked around

Naturally the orca viewing tank was one of our most favorite experiences.  What a feeling of awe you get as this massive mammal cruises by.  So beautiful.  We didn't love the actual orca show as much as we enjoyed the dolphins and the sea lions.  The orca show mostly seemed to focus on getting people wet.  Now, I'm not going to lie, I went and sat down in the splash zone with Skippidy and Cara, and though we ourselves didn't get hardly wet at all, it was extremely entertaining to watch people, who had been fully warned about getting wet in the spots where they were, get absolutely soaked to the bone as the whales slapped water across them.  They looked shocked and pretty mad, even though they were sitting in the soak zone.  It's called that for a reason, trust me.

What a wonderful day we had.

On Friday we fit in some more beach time and brought our real camera.  We had a lot of fun taking pictures of our family.  It was so rewarding to have every single grandchild there in a big happy group. Honestly they get along so well - I really saw hardly any squabbles at all.  And as I have said before I adore the time I get to spend with my siblings.  Sorry for the photo overload, it can't be helped.