Sea World and more

Can you believe it? Less than a week and I'm already doing another post?!? I'm going to do better now that I'm finally caught up, I swear. So, we have had a very fun, and busy past week or so. This first picture was actually taken 2 weeks ago. We decided last minute to go to a Rangers game one Friday night. We had a good time. We brought our own hot dogs and snacks and enjoyed the game, followed by some great fireworks! And to top it all off, the Rangers won! They also had a couple of home runs which was fun to see.

The rest of the pictures are from the past 5 days. We went to Sea World in San Antonio on Thursday and Friday of this week and had an absolute blast. The boys did SO GOOD, I can't brag on them enough. They got to bed extremely late every night and were troopers in the park. In fact, day one we were only 30 minutes shy of doing open to closing in the park! We had no intention of staying that long, but the boys were doing so well we just kept going. It was about as perfect a day you could ask for. Although it was extremely hot, there were no lines or waiting for anything, so we were able to do everything we wanted (some things more than once) that first day. Aaron even walked directly on a couple of the rides that the boys and I couldn't do. We did the water park on the second day, but I didn't get any pictures there. We were pretty wiped out by the time we left, but again we had no more than a 10 minute wait for any of the slides and we easily did everything we wanted to do that day.

Luke was happy to get his picture taken with Shamu. Ben liked the idea of seeing Shamu, but once it was time for a picture he chickened out.

Luke's first roller coaster! You can see me with the glasses on, Luke is hidden on the other side. He rode several rides, but this was his favorite. He rode it at least 4 times, maybe even 5.

The first place we went was to the Sea Lions. There was this tiny baby that I think someone said was only a week old. We were able to witness one of the sweetest scenes I've ever seen in person. The baby was all by itself on the rock, stumbling around a little like it didn't know where to go. It was crying this sad little cry, and this went on for several minutes. All of the sudden you heard an adult sea lion bark. Baby cried, mama barked back, baby cried, mama barked, cry, bark. Then you saw mama sea lion come running (the best way a sea lion can run) across the rocks and jump over to comfort baby. This picture is when mama first got to baby. She immediately laid down and baby began to nurse. It was just the neatest scene to watch how some things are the same across all types of mammals. This baby cried, and mama recognized the cry and came running as fast as she could get there to take care of baby.

Shamu show!
This is one of only a couple of rides Ben could do.

Dolphin in mid-air during dolphin/beluga whale show.

At the dolphin tank.
We paid to feed the dolphins, and Luke and I were able to very briefly touch one as we gave it fish.

A great memory- as Luke and Aaron were on a ride, there was a sudden flash storm where it downpoured for about 10 minutes. Aaron and Luke were actually on the ride when it hit, so they had no protection. Ben and I got under a shade tent, but it was not totally water proof, so we still got pretty wet. As you can see, the boys were TOTALLY drenched, and this is completely from the rainstorm that hit. We were all soaked to the bone, but it was so hot we were actually quite refreshed and really didn't mind how wet we were. The boys took a few minutes to splash in the puddles as the rain began to taper off.

All tuckered out at the end of the day. We had barely left the parking lot and Ben was crashed in his seat, holding Shamu of course!

Luke didn't crash until we got back to the hotel, so he's showing off his purchases from the day- a dolphin he named Dolphiny and a scuba diver man with all scuba accessories (accessories not pictured here because I didn't want to lose them in the car).

We got home LATE Friday night, and then Saturday was the big open house for our new church building. We went up to that and they had someone doing face painting for the kids. She was about as talented as I've seen in face painting, and the boys picked out their designs. Luke wanted to be a cheetah, and Ben was Spiderman. She said that under 3 can be real iffy for face painting because it's hard for some to sit still long enough (although she was VERY fast, less than 5 minutes per face). Ben sat there perfectly still and didn't move a muscle, he was so determined to be spiderman. Unfortunately, they had to wash their faces off as soon as we got home- Ben needed a nap, and Luke had a swim birthday party to go to. I made sure to get a picture first so they could look at themselves as a cheetah or spiderman whenever they wanted.