SeaWorld

Jaydon, Tylor and I headed up north to meet up with Steve and his family in Kissimmee, Steve flew back to the US from Doha and a long 3 weeks away from his boys.  I had rented a 7 bedroom house and the plan was for all 3 of Steve’s sisters plus their kids and grandma and grandpa to join us and spend Christmas together (for the first time since Steve left for college).  Headcount was 10 adults, 4 kids, 2 infants all under 1 roof for a week – what could go wrong…  We all made it except for Steve’s sister Renee and her husband (they had an unexpected death in the family) but they still sent along their son Tanner with Steve’s other sister Niki. 
We decided to ‘take it easy’ for the first day and headed off to Sea World. 

One of the first things we watched when we arrived was the dolphin nursery.  This is a play tank where they have adult and young dolphins together so the young ones can learn how to do some of the tricks like jumping out of the water and sliding around on slippery surfaces.  The dolphins were having a great time and we found it difficult to tear ourselves away to see more until we realized that it was time to see Shamu. 

Talk about a flash back to childhood – watching the Shamu show was absolutely wonderful and almost emotional, I remember the first time I saw it and falling totally in love with Killer Whales.  It was great to see again and to watch Jaydon’s reaction to getting splashed by a whale. 

He and his cousin Karlee had a blast. 

Next we headed off to the Polar Express ride where the kids got to see Santa except Jaydon didn’t want anything to do with him, even with his cousins being so excited about seeing him. 

We had to settle for pictures with the Christmas dolphin and Santa Shamu. 

Jaydon got to experience some of his first amusement park rides.

Karlee and Jaydon did a train ride by themselves which Jaydon thought was great

and Tylor just hung out getting passed from relative to relative (until he saw mommy and started fussing). 

Nap time quickly came and went and finally Jaydon and his cousin James succumbed and had a quick nap on the go –

one of many to happen that way during the week. 

Once napped and refreshed Jaydon saw some of his favorite birds the flamingos (or mingos as Jaydon used to say) and we said good bye to Shamu and his friends after a fun day at Sea World.