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!