SeaWorld

Friday we spent the day at SeaWorld, San Diego. The day started out a little cool but then it warmed up nicely. We had a lot of fun watching the dolphin and whale shows. We sat in the soak zone at the whale show because the kids were hoping to get a little wet but we lucked out - Blondie was especially disappointed. Each time the whales splashed the audience and it missed us Blondie would say, "What?!? We didn't even get wet!!" I didn't think the whales did quite as good a job at splashing the audience as the dolphins did. :)

We were going to eat lunch in the park after the whale show but decided to go back out to the car to eat the sandwiches we had brought because the line was incredibly long. After Disneyland we weren't too keen on having to stand in anymore lines.
After lunch we went to a pet show that featured dogs, cats, pigs and a few other animals doing tricks. After that we went on a few rides that the park has. DH and the three oldest kids went on a water ride and DH really enjoyed watching the expression on Blondie's face as they went careening down the waterfall! Then we went over to some kiddie rides so Kitty could ride some things as well.

Check out these faces!

Another fun part for the kids was touching the bat rays. They were in a big shallow pool and would come close to the surface and edge of the pool so you could touch them! Unfortunately I didn't get a great picture of them - partly because my camera battery was dying.When we came out of the penguin exhibit we saw this trainer hand feeding these smaller penguins outside. She said that they hand feed them because the seagulls (see the right side of the picture) are very aggressive and like to steal the food from the penguins, so the trainer is there to protect the penguins from the seagulls. In another area they were selling food for people to give to some sea lions and the birds would fly right up and steal the fish right out of people's hands when they weren't paying attention.
It is very hard taking pictures of moving fish behind glass in low light conditions... Most of my pictures turned out blurry...
My husband and this fish (a giant grouper) were having a staring contest! Luckily he didn't move so the picture isn't blurry...
By the end of the day it started to cool off again and it tried to rain on us. We stayed until the park closed and then on our way back to the hotel it POURED!