vacation: part 3

our second activity that we did during the week was take avery to sea world.  i had been once when i was a kid and charlie had never been.  we thought avery would like this better than the zoo since she's much more into the aquatic life.  i think she did like some of the animals better, but she's definitely more into the fish than the mammals.  we had some of the same issues at sea world that we did at the zoo, namely avery didn't want to ride in the stroller or hold charlie's hand and at times was really upset over something completely unknown to us.  since sea world is a lot smaller than the zoo it was a lot easier to get around and we didn't have the same challenges with the hilly terrain.  

charlie attempting to shade her head from the sun.  

one of the things that upset avery on this trip was that she refused to wear a hat about 95% of the time.  she then ended up with a sunburn on her head, which hurt her but couldn't make the connection between her head feeling better and wearing a hat.  so the sea world trip was one of the times where we tried to make her sit in the stroller as much as possible just for the shade, but of course she wasn't happy about riding in her stroller.  

our first stop at sea world were the whales.  the underwater tanks were awesome for viewing a lot of the animals and without them she never would have been into the animals as much as she was.



she was less impressed with the dolphins, turtles, seals, and sea lions. they had a tide pool with a bunch of starfish that the kids could touch and she LOVED touching the starfish.  she was a little apprehensive at first but once i showed her she was all about it.  we touched a lot of starfish and i'm pretty sure she would have crawled right into that water to catch all of the ones she couldn't reach from the edge.  she kept talking about how she touched the starfish all day and even now when she sees a picture she'll tell you exactly what was going on.


at the whale show.

i think one of the biggest attractions of sea world is all of the shows that they have.  we went to two.  the first was a show with mainly cats and dogs and a few pigs and kangaroos, too.  the show was amazing and avery absolutely loved it.  every black dog was 'henry' and every tabby cat was 'toby' and she kept asking for 'more cat' and 'more dog'.  both charlie and i were really impressed with the show, too.  they use all rescue animals which is even cooler and at the end of the show the kids could come up and pet the animals.  avery really like petting the cat but didn't want to pet the dog.  i don't have any pictures from the show because i spent the whole time holding avery and trying to cover her head up from the sun.  we also went to the whale show, which was less impressive.  is it sad that i'm more impressed by cats than whales? and avery wasn't nearly as into it.  this was the last thing we did that day and she was so tired she fell asleep as soon as we got her into her stroller after the show.



there's also an arctic section of sea world with beluga whales, polar bears, a walrus, and penguins.  i thought that avery would be really into the penguins since she talks about them a lot but she was more into the whale and the walrus.

overall i think she liked sea world better than the zoo, although it's hard to tell.  charlie and i joked that we should have saved our money and just taken her to the aquarium in san diego since we knew she would have loved that.  sea world had a very small aquarium section that she loved and could have stayed there for hours.  i guess the good thing about these trips is that we now know that a season aquarium pass is a better investment for us than a season zoo pass.