Sea World

Our Disneyland time is just about up and we have begun to explore the adventure that Sea World has to offer. I will say, we were quite disappointed with the quality of their exhibits, but the shows are fantastic!

After quite some time without McKayla's usual cute quotes, I finally got another one during the first Shamu show. About 10 minutes into the show she turns to me and says, "Those animals aren't real, right?" I tell that they are real trained whales. She turns back to the show and says, "I CAN'T BELIEVE MY EYES!" Seeing her amazement made the day completely worthwhile!

A word of warning to anyone thinking of visiting Sea World: When they say "splash zone" they really mean it! We got lucky, but some poor people got absolutely drenched at some of the shows (one show they literally had a fountain of water pouring on the people) and it was only about 55 degrees outside (quite chilly for San Diego.) I felt sorry for them!

This walrus was in a swimming pattern that took him right by the window where Courtney was standing. When we visited right before Christmas we saw that one of his Tusks had broken in half.

Sea World has a Christmas Shamu show that we were able to see. The show featured music from a choir and had several instrumental soloists. I was pleasantly suprised to find that the music and quotes used all centered on the birth of Christ. These days it seems that public venues all avoid the religous part of the holiday and I quite enjoyed hearing the carols sung and scriptures read in a public setting like Sea World.

Relaxing and Fun Holidays

This is called lazy sledding! The girls had a great ride down a very long hill and then an equally thrilling ride back up to the top while being pulled by their grandpa's 4-wheeler! After they decided they were too cold to continue (you do get cold quicker without all that work of pulling the sled back up the hill) we headed home for hot chocolate and a dip in the indoor hot tub! What a life!

This year we decided to stay home for Christmas, although we did leave for Utah the day after! Chris was able to take most of the last two weeks of December off from work and actually stayed close to home for the first part of the month as well. It was SO nice to have him around. We both felt much more relaxed and were able to just enjoy the season together with the girls. We are now back to the grind--work and school and activities.

Christmas included the usual school concerts (where you will undoubtedly sit on the wrong side of the room so that your kid is completely blocked from view!), sledding in Utah, video gaming, jumping on the NEW TRAMPOLINE (who thought kids could actually spend 4-5 hours a day jumping up and down!), Christmas Caroling, baking treats, etc. The kids actually all slept in until the usual 7:00 Christmas morning! We were quite happy. New Years Eve was equally relaxed. The girls had no problem celebrating with the people in Times Square. So, at promptly 9:00 we were blowing our horns and popping our string poppers and yelling "Happy New Year!" The girls then headed up to bed. Having already "celebrated," Chris and I felt no need to stay up until midnight. We headed to bed early and woke up the next morning pleasantly suprised that there were no neighborhood fireworks to wake us up at midnight. (There is usually quite a ruckus!)

On the way home from Utah we took a slight detour to visit Hoover Dam. It was an interesting stop, but we decided that we won't bother to go again until the new bridge bypassing the dam is finished. There are security checks along the road which currently goes across it and it took us almost an hour to travel the last 4 miles to the parking lot!