Dophin Discovery tour (in detail)

So, I would have to say that it is a Carroll family consensus that the best part of our San Antonio vacation was our Dophin Discovery tour at Sea World. It is evidently a very popular tour and hard to book. Who knew? I just picked it on the website when I was buying our tickets. It was very nice because it was just the 4 of us and two other people.

Basically what they did was tell us about how they care for the dolphins, how they feed them, how they train them and so on. This bored Emma a little bit, but Katie was full of questions and of course I loved it!

After that, we got to do our interactive part. We walked around the different "pools" and they explained to us why the dolphins were back there - some were old, some were too young and some were to aggressive for the fish to be in the Discovery Cove where you can feed the dolphins. (Basically they got too smart for the people and would take the trays from the guests feeding them!)

Anyway, after that we got to "pet" the dolphins:




They actually had a photographer taking these pictures, and I got a CD in the end. I love these pictures of the girls:



The family:



My little dolphin girl. Is this too cute?




Love this picture of Katie:




Even Mama got her picture taken:

Doesn't Mark look like the crocodile hunter? He had to buy this hat to protect his noggin:

Then we each got to 'teach' the dolphin a trick, or should I say, perform a trick with the dolphin. Its hard to tell in these pictures, but Emma twirled "like a ballerina" to make the dophin spin - too cute!

Then we got to feed them after our trick:

Katie's trick was too send him to go under and then jump in the air. I am so glad the photographer got these pics of the dolphin in the air:

How amazing is this photo?

My trick was to get him to wave his fins:

Mark shook hands with him:

Here we are getting to "pet" the dolphin:

Lastly, they asked if we wanted to get splashed, and Katie and Emma and I took them up on their offer. (I had already gotten drenched on a raft ride, hence my bathing suite attire):

I was surprised b/c I didn't think about how salty and cold it was going to be! Very nice, Missy.

All in all, it was a great trip. This day at Sea World, which after the tour was followed up with an afternoon at the water park was the best. It was supposed to storm this day, and I was really worried we weren't going to get to do the water park, but it never got real bad. It was overcast most of the day.

After the 8 hour drive home, we were all bushed, and glad to be back in our bads. Sorry school is starting so soon. I try not to think about it.

The Riverwalk and Sea world

Okay, this post is going to be complicated because I have over 200 pictures from this trip now. What I have in this post is a few from the riverwalk and then our 2 days at Sea World. Because we did a special Dolphin Encounter on the second day, we got a CD with over 80 pictures of our tour. I haven't included any of those today. I think I may do a separate post for that. They are truly amazing.

Here are Katie and Mark on the riverwalk:



KAtie and Emma:



Self portrait on the riverwalk boat cruise:




Hanging out in the pool that afternoon. It never ceases to amaze me how my kids would take swimming at a hotel pool over any vacation activity. And our pool was tiny at the hotel!

Cowgirl Katie at the pool:

Rainforest cafe on the Riverwalk:

When we got to Sea World the first day, we went to the Dophin Cove where for a not-so-small fee you can feed dophins fish. This was not our "behind the scenes" interactive program. That will come later:

So Missy is slightly excited here:

We didn't start out with a stroller for Emma, but after awhile, it made everyone's day better when she had one!

I took no less than 20 pictures during the Shamu show, but here was one of the best:

Leaving Sea World the first day with Emma's "prize". She and Katie both picked Sea World Barbies, and they have already played with them a bunch:

So, on the second day, the first thing we did was ride a family style raft ride b/c the day before there was a 2 HOUR wait. We waited about 10 minutes the second day b/c we went DURING the Shamu show instead of afterwards! This is a great pic of Mark and Katie, but I also have an awful one of me and Emma where I am drenched by the waterfall I caught the brunt of!

Now these couple of pics are from our backstage dolphin interactive tour. I started to put a bunch more, but there were so many from what I took and what was on the CD they gave us. I think I may make a second post tomorrow.

Basically, we got to meet the dolphins, learn how they take care of them and train them. Then they let us do some commands with them and take tons of pics.

I'll post some more of this tomorrow.

The last thing we did today was go to the Lost Lagoon water park that is inside Sea World. Because we lived in the water, I only took like 2 pictures. We thought we weren't going to get to do much b/c thunderstorms were predicted for today, but we made it. It was kind of overcast the whole day, but guess who managed to get burned any way! Emma discovered she loves water slides, and Katie basically discovered she.... uh.... doesn't! I am hoping to raise a ride lover so I have someone to ride with me. Emma is crazy brave and I am so excited about that. (for those of you who don't know, my darling husband is NOT a rider!) The water park had several slides, a lazy river, a wave pool and a huge kids play area. Here is one of only 2 pics I took of Katie in front of it:

Check back tomorrow of the next day for some more on the trip!

Too pooped to post!

Hello all who might check this blog regularly. I am too whipped to post tonight. I know, I'll have a zillion pics by the time I do the past two days, but walking around Sea World in 95 degree weather with two potentially whiny kids tends to have an effect on my old, out of shape body. It was a good day, but we did have bouts of fussiness (including Mark and I) and we are all whooped! We saw some amazing shows and Mama did some cool rides (did I mention I belong to a family of chickens when it comes to rides?) Emma has potential, though, she waited with me for over an hour for a log ride. She was just too short to ride anything else. I'll tell you all about that later! Nighty, night!
M

On the road to San Antonio and our first day

So we left Houston around 10 am, and since it was a Saturday morning,we basically had no traffic. The ride was quick (and boring), but did pass through Weimar Texas, which for those of you who don't know is extremely close to my maiden name (Weimer). We found out driving through this part of Texas and through our riverwalk guide that San Antonio has a lot of German heritage (.....ah, my people!):




Okay, these pictures don't do this truck stop justice, but it was the hugest and BUSIEST stop I have ever been too. Evidently this is where everyone stops before they get to San Antonio. There wasn't much for quite a while and we all had to go to the bathroom and Mark needed to get gas.... well so does everyone else in the tri-county area.




Inside of this truck stop was like a mad house. I wish you could tell how gigantic and busy it was. It was called Bucky's or something and the mascot was a beaver. Didn't realize how popular it was until we saw beaver t-shirts in San Antonio. Crazy!




We got to San Antonio around 1:30 or so. Our hotel is basically right behind the Alamo, and we would pass through it to get to the downtown / riverwalk area. We just walked around the Alamo this day, and didn't get the full tour until Sunday. I didn't realize how many other things there were to see on the grounds:

This gigantic line would come and go during the day. Sunday morning (which I will get to in the next blog) we walked right in.

The first thing we really did was the Children's Museum. It was very much like the one in New Orleans. Here Emma is making slime:

Here Katie and Emma are actually driving a front end loader. Very neat. They actually picked up rocks and dumped them in a container:

They also had the grocery store thing like in New Orleans. This is the girls favorite and they actually fought over using the cash register. We had to drag them away from this:

We walked down on the riverwalk area (kind of by accident) a little bit. We did more of that, including the river cruise Sunday:

Lastly, we toured the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. Very touristy, I know, but we never do these things other places, so what the heck! Mark's favorite part was the singing couple below (they were wax, in case you can't tell) They would put pop songs on like "Boom Boom Pow by the black eyes peas and such - pretty funny acutally:

This was some crazy walk through thing with lights that made you feel, well, drunk basically. Katie was not real cool about walking throught it, but here are Mark and Emma:

Finally, we took a dip in the pool when we got back to the hotel. It was packed, but the girls didn't care. We actually got the whole pool to ourselves this afternoon, but I'll get to that later.

I'm kinda doing this a day behind. I'll try and post what we did today, tomorrow (get it). I may have to do a combo post. We are headed off to Sea World early tomorrow, so I need to get to sleep. Adios!

On the road to San Antonio

So, how cool is this... Mark and I both got new laptops for school, and they have a little place in front for my SD card from my camera. So I can blog from our trip. I brought the laptop to do some "school work" while we were in the hotel room and such, but don't hold your breath on that one!

Anyway, we drove to Houston today, and everything was great. I know, most people would go ahead and drive all the way to San Antonio, but the Carrolls arent big drivers. We got to Houston before 4 o'clock, so we made pretty decent time. Here are some pics from the drive:

The happy driver:



Self portrait of Mama from the back seat. Mark and I have discovered that Emma and I sitting in the back is more peaceful than Katie and Emma in the back.



Stopping at the Texas welcome center to take a few pics:

The girls at the welcome center:

The well planned trip hits a snag in Houston with traffic (around 3 o'clock), but it didn't last very long:

Downtown Houston:

Dad and Emma having some drinks and hor d'oeurves in the hotel bar (well.... Mama and Daddy had the drinks and the kids had some snacks!)

Katie and Emma at the hotel. We stayed at an Embassy suites right outside Houston and it was super nice. Very modern and new looking. Here are the girls playing after we ate some dinner.

We are heading out for San Antonio tomorrow morning so check back for some info then. I may not do this every night, but I'll try! Later!