My family has this thing about holidays; they are full, sometimes overfull, with traditions. I think that is the main reason that this holiday season seemed so strange to me. Even writing about it much later I get this sense of unease and exhilaration about the way we spent Christmas week. That being said, we got to spend Christmas Eve in Sea World, and it was amazing. I had never been, and Alex went once as a teenager, so we were just as excited as the kids to see all the animals and attractions.
We decided, in typical Casqueiro fashion, to go early and see as much as we possibly could before going home. I was so glad that we did that, because there were all of these touch pools and activities to do before you even went into the park. Here is Olivia enjoying, then being totally grossed out by the sucker fish that eat the dead skin off of your hands.
The park is really big, and we weren't at all confident that we would be able to see everything, so we headed to the most important thing first: the dolphin show. I'm really glad Alex talked me out of it, but I was pretty sure we wanted to be about 5 rows up, above the first few really wet rows, but well within the soak zone. We ended up about 10 rows up, still in the soak zone, but much higher than I originally sat.
The show was awesome. It was so fun to see the dolphins and trainers swimming and playing together, the kids (and grownups) totally loved it. A month later you can ask Makenzie about dolphins and she will get this beyond excited look on her face and say 'dolphin splashed me!!' in her adorable 2 year old voice. We got a few sprinkles from the last big splash, which was the perfect amount of wet, in my opinion.
We went straight from the dolphin show to the orca show. It would have been better to space them out a big, but the orcas only perform twice a day, and we weren't sure how long we would last, so we went to the first one. It was cool as well, and may be the only time our kids see an orca, but the dolphins were way more fun. Alex says the orca show is totally dumbed down from the last time he saw it, with fewer and less cool tricks. Either way, the kids enjoyed it and were some of the last kids to see the show before it closes next year.
We ate lunch and saw a few exhibits, then decided to go to the Pets Rule! show. It was recommended by every local that we talked to, but I thought it was strange to spend the better part of an hour watching a dog trick show at an aquarium. I was totally wrong. The show was adorable, included many different types of animals, and was the most interactive event of the day. Each kid remembers a different favorite part, and Olivia is quick to tell you about all the tricks they tried to play on the audience and how they did them.
Makenzie slept while we walked through some more exhibits, but when she woke up we immediately headed to the Sesame Street Playland. I didn't know that this was part of Sea World, but M is really into Sesame Street, and Elmo in particular, so I knew she would enjoy this part of the day. She was able to see and meet Elmo with no wait, which was a highlight of the day. We also rode Elmo's Flying Fish, which fulfilled the ride requirement for the day.
Alex's face... (I love my husband :))
As we were leaving Sesame Street, the kids were slowing down a little - it's hard to expect a 4 and 6 year old to walk the entire time of an amusement park, but the two smaller kids got to ride, so that's the way it goes. We saw this beautiful rainbow and stopped to show it to all the kids when we started getting pelted by a crazy hail storm. Everyone started dashing for shops and cover and we just waited out a storm that rolled over us in less than five minutes before we were back to overcast, slightly damp weather.
We let the kids each go to a few gift shops to pick their souvenir that they bought with Christmas money, then went into the shark building last. I didn't expect it to be this cool, but everyone enjoyed the moving sidewalk underneath the sharks. I have walked through a glass enclosure before at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, but I expected some of the kids to be nervous. They were totally unphased and couldn't wait to go back through.
At the end of the shark building was this cool tank with exotic fish and some Sea Turtles. The turtles were so playful! One came up and was totally waving to Olivia and Carter when they waved to him, and another kept swimming past Makenzie and Carter in a different window. The moment of turning around to see the Turtle (who Carter is pretty sure is Crush from Finding Nemo) waving to the kids was definitely my favorite of the day.
We grabbed a quick family photo as we left and headed back to the hotel for some rest and Christmas Eve dinner.
In the car on the way back to the hotel, Olivia shared some knowledge with us that I hadn't expected and was totally unprepared for. She was sure that Santa was coming to visit our hotel room! Santa visited us a week early this year when we celebrated Christmas before our trip, so I thought we would read our traditional Christmas Orange story and go to bed, but O was absolutely certain that if she left out cookies, Santa would still come again. After ten minutes of us unable to convince her otherwise, I gave up the fight. I was happy to find that the dinner that evening included adorably decorated Christmas cookies, so we were able to leave out a few. I'm also grateful for a wonderful husband who loves to be Santa's helper, even when it means a late night trip to a grocery store in search of something fun and small and inexpensive that the kids would feel was magical. He delivered, as he does every time he has a chance to be the cool dad :).
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