Sea World?!....Why not?!

Okay, so I'm not even close to recovering from the New York trip when my husband calls me on Monday afternoon and asks, "What do we have going on this weekend?" Well, we had a few things going on but nothing too important. So then Chris says, "Well...I have a group out in San Diego this week and I need to be there. Joel (his boss) has already booked a hotel room and has 5 extra Sea World tickets. Do we want to load everyone up Thursday night and go?" "Um..YEAH!" was my response!!! Soo...once again, I crammed 5 days of work into 4 and we headed out to San Diego for a free vacation getaway--can't pass those things up right?!

We got into San Diego super late Thursday night, slept in on Friday, and got up and headed to Coronado Beach. Chris actually had to work all day Friday so it was just me and the kids. I had NEVER driven in California before so I was super nervous about it but Chris brought one of his office "Magellan" navigator GPS systems. Me and "Maggie" became good friends!!! I would have gone nowhere without it!!! Coronado Beach was not too far from our hotel. We loaded up all our sand toys, packed a picnic, and headed over. Well, we got there, set our stuff down and ran to the water. We hadn't even been there 5 minutes when I heard Max screaming!!! He was seeing a big fat seagull help himself to one of our sandwiches in our bag!!! Stinkin' scavenger!!! So we all take off running at full speed to save our lunch--Max had a couple of plastic sand toys in his hands and he was yelling and screaming and chucking the sand toys at the bird! The stinkin' bird ate my sandwich--ziploc baggie and ALL!!! It would have helped itself to more but we made it back in time! Max took it upon himself to stand guard after that! I was down by the water with the other 3 kids laughing soo hard that I was crying because Max was soo serious about his post! He would stand there calmly and then if a bird even flew over head, he would go crazy swinging sand shovels and making karate sounds!!! He was really enjoying himself but I wanted him to enjoy the water too so I traded spots with him after a while. Good ol Max!


Look out "Bay Watch" babes!!! Here comes Tatum!!!



And our lunch is safe!!!


THE STINKIN' BIRD!!!


After the beach, we went back to our hotel room to get cleaned up. We discovered that our hotel had an indoor pool and spa so we just headed there instead of the showers. The kids swam and swam for another 2 hours. Here are some funny hot-tub pics:


Since my older brother lives in San Diego--he's in the Coast Guard--we made plans to meet up with him and his family when their kids got home from school. The kids ALWAYS love playing with cousins. Ethan and Seth are very close in age and get along amazingly well. Cali LOVES Carlie and just had the best time playing dress-up the entire time. We hung out and ate dinner with the Knoops and then headed back to our hotel room totally and completely exhausted from day 1 of our impromptu trip. But it was an AWESOME day!



So Saturday, we were up bright and early trying to get everyone fed, dressed, packed up, and ready to go to Sea World!!! We got there as soon as the park opened and spent the whole day there. We hit the rides first--of course. Carlie, Ethan, and Max are now finally tall enough to ride everything. Carlie and Max DID ride EVERYTHING. Ethan is content to leave the scary rides to his brother and sister! And we of course had to sit in the "soak zones" at the shows. I'm always amazed at the animal training!!! There's a new show there called "Pets Rule" and they had 65 trained cats of all things!!! I can't even imagine how hard it would be to train a whale let alone a cat!!!





The "Sea Lions Live" show was HILARIOUS! They had the BIGGEST sea lion I have ever seen--and it was PINK!!! Not sure if it was albino or what. They never said but it was amazing!

Awesome aquariums everywhere!



The kids really enjoyed petting the "Bat Rays" (some form of manta rays) and Starfish.






By dinner time, we were once again exhausted! So we loaded up and headed out of Sea World to get some dinner and head home! We made it home around 11:30 P.M. Super exhausted but super happy!!! Worth every exhausting minute! We sure do love Dad's job!!! I spend a lot of time being a single mom, but the travel perks are worth it to me! NOW...time to re-coup for next Saturday--my piano recitals!!! Sleep?!?! Who needs it right?!?!