Sea World

One very sweltering day in August we captured Ava, Henry and Joy and spent the day at Sea World.  Our kids had been looking forward to this day for weeks and weeks.  

The Journey to Atlantis ride is really the only real roller coaster we can get Matt to ride at this point.  It has one really nice, long drop at the end that sends the cart splashing through the water.  All that water douses the onlookers that hang on the fence.  While Matt and I were on the ride, Will & Henry were getting soaked at the fence line and loving it.  Matt got his turn once we got back from the ride.  Hilarious!

This year Will was tall enough to go on a few rides.  He rode the Shamu Express a few times and enjoyed every second.  I think Henry thought it was a little scary at first as evidenced by the screams you hear, but by the second go around he thought it was okay.  :)

Henry and Will loved this huge net thing that they could climb way up high in.  We had a really tough time getting them to come out and move on to something else.  And all day long they kept asking to come back to the net.

We saw Shamu show off her stuff which is always amazing.  The kids were disappointed we didn't get wet in the splash zone though.  I was ok with that because then our snacks we were snacking on didn't get soggy!

After that, we ate lunch, let the adults take turns riding roller coasters, and then headed to the water park portion of the park.  That place is so much fun!  The big kids rode all of the tube slides, we spent time in the wave pool, the lazy river, and spent quite a bit of time on the little kiddie slides.  Johnathan absolutely loved getting to ride the little water slides.  I wish we could have videoed it, but it took 2 adults to assist him.  Steven and I took turns: one of us would walk him up to the top of the slide, make sure he waited his turn and then sat on his bottom, and then one of us would catch him at the bottom.  His face was the best.  He was grinning and giggling the whole time.  "Johnny slide!  Johnny slide!!!"  He probably did it 20 times in a row and would have kept going, but Steven & I had to cut him off at some point.  After thoroughly exhausting ourselves in the water park for a few hours we headed back to the amusement park.

The kids rode some more rides.

Johnny (and all the rest of us) got to ride the carousel!

Little John was a trooper all day.  He didn't whine or cry or make a stink at all.  He had a total blast and never missed a beat even though he didn't get his nap in.  I thought surely at some point he would just crash, but he didn't want to miss a minute of the fun.  We were letting Henry and Will climb on the net again, and all the while there was a Sesame Street "block party" going on.  All the characters were dancing and parading around with loud music, and Johnny was entranced.  I thought he was going to fall asleep staring at them from the stroller.

I love this picture of the Reners we took as we walked out the front entrance to leave.  Henry was totally pooped and in no mood to be photographed!

We ate some delicious bbq at Rudy's and then started the trek home.  Henry was the first to fuss at everyone to hush so he could go to sleep, and sleep he did.  Eventually they all fell asleep, and it was a quiet ride home.  It was a super fun day made even more great by having our dear friends there with us.