Day 2 in Orlando - Sea World

Can I just say how much I love Anheuser-Busch?  Yes, my husband drinks their beer, but that's not the reason.  The reason?  They are AWESOME supporters of our military!  Military and their families can get into any of their parks for free once a year.  We chose to go to Sea World on our trip to Florida because of this and because the kids are such a great age for this park.  There's so much for them to see and do!

The very first thing we did was get into line to feed the dolphins.  As long as I can remember, I have LOVED dolphins.  They are beautiful, smart creatures that always look happy.  I wish I could work as a trainer at Sea World just to work with the dolphins (of course, working with the other animals would be awesome too!!!).  I knew the kids would love this activity, but really?  This was for Mommy!  LOL

We paid $7 per person (other than Aiden and Colten since they were young enough to enter for free) to have a tray of fish.  A try is basically the little paper trays you see in the picture with about 4-5 fish in it.  Kind of expensive, but completely worth it!

We took turns since I was taking pictures and Daddy was the only one who could help them.  Austin was up first.  I think he was a little apprehensive about something.  It was either the yucky fish, or all those teeth in that dolphins mouth!  ;-)  He did enjoy it....I promise! 

 Then, it was Colten's turn. You can kind of see his smile in this one.  He loved it!

 Then it was Mommy's turn.  Since most everyone else was done, the dolphins were kind of just hanging out and there was a trainer that had the attention of a lot of them down from us.  I had all these fish and NO dolphin to feed them to!  Trying to get the attention of a dolphin was a little hard, so I pulled the fish back up out of the water and just about got my hand taken off by a bird!  Brian wasn't taking pictures yet, so you don't get the delight of seeing that!  LOL

Finally, a dolphin swam over and realized that he (she?) was in luck!  More goodies!  I fed him the fish, then grabbed Aiden so he could see the dolphins closer.  That's when Brian started taking pictures.  This dolphin just stayed there and let me touch it for a long time.  Then another dolphin came up and this picture was taken.  Reminded us of Abby and Koa.  So sweet!

 After the dolphins, we met up with our friends from the day before and went to the Dolphin and Whale show.

Here's Austin making a funny face while we wait for the start of the show.

 And here's Mommy, Aiden and Colten.  Yay!  A picture of me!

 We loved this show.  It was great to see all the tricks and at a coupe of points in the show, near the end, they let some macaws loose in the seating area and they soar right above your head.  I mean, almost to where you can touch them!  Aiden thought that was THE. BEST. THING on Earth.  He went NUTS!

Here's a picture I liked from that show.  I love the dolphin that looked way more excited than the others and just had to show off!

Here's Daddy and a tired Aiden walking to some other attraction.  :-)

And yes, this picture is blurry, but I had to include it because I just love how it completely shows Colten's personality!

 We spent a little more money to fed the sharks.  I knew as soon as I heard the camera click that this was an awesome shot!

Happy with Daddy!!!

 So sweet!

During our first trip to Disney as a family of 3, Austin sat on Brian's shoulders just like this.  So glad we have 2 more boys Brian can do this with!

The sting ray area was another hit with the kids.  It was a giant pool that had sting rays just swimming in circles.  You could reach in and touch them as they went by.  The kids really liked all this hands on stuff!

On our way to the alligators, we stopped by the underground Dolphin viewing area.  It was fun to see them play and chase each other at this angle!

 I forgot to mention that Aiden started a fascination with sharks when we fed them.  He would point at them and say "shark shark shark!"  It sounded more like "arh arh arh" but we figured it out pretty quickly what he was trying to say.  After feeding them, we went to a shop and he got this rubber shark.  He LOVED this thing!

Here he is cuddling with his new shark while waiting for the Shamu Show.  Whoever said sharks weren't cute never saw this picture!

 After the Shamu show, we went over to their area where there are some kid rides.  Colten BEGGED to go on the roller coaster.  Yay!  A kid that might take after his parents' love of roller coasters!  He rode this one TWICE and would have ridden more, but we there were more things he wanted to do too, so we moved on.  Even his older brother wouldn't ride this!  Of course, Colten begged to go on ALL the roller coasters we saw, so he was pretty sad when he couldn't go on anymore since he was too young/small.  He had fun on this one!  He laughed through the whole thing.

 Here's Austin and Johnathon before a ride they did end up on.  They also went on this HUGE rope ladder playground.  Very cool!

 By the end of the night, the kids had been worn down and the Bigs needed a ride, so the Daddys put them up on their shoulders.  :-) 

 Again, we loved Sea World!  It was a top notch park that had things for all ages!  We didn't realize until dinner that they give FREE meals for those under 3.  We could have been getting Colten and Aiden their own meals instead of them sharing!  By the time we go again, we probably won't have a kid that young, but it's nice to know just in case!