Sea World on the 4th of July!

Without question one of our favorite things about Texas is Sea World.  Every year we are excited to take advantage of our free military day at Sea World.  It has been fun to share this amazing place with family each year.  This year on the 4th of July we spent a fabulous day in Sea World San Antonio with Grandpa Simpson and my sister Sierra and her family.  

This boy loves water so much!  And Sea World is his favorite!  

Everyone excited to begin our day!
We did learn something about uncle Roy through this adventure, he is a planner!  Like a spread sheet, map things out, look at every scenario, optimize efficiency type planner.  If you someday find an app or online scheduler to plan out your Sea World day it will be because Roy decided to design the program. Of course after his hours of planning, we left the spread sheet at home!
Fortunately it all worked out perfectly!

Dolphin Cove and Aquarium

Unfortunately you can no longer feed the dolphins but you can watch them swim around and if they swim close to you, you can touch them.  I got to touch one but as much as Caleb tried he did not.  He was bummed!

Beautiful sharks!

Pets Ahoy!
This year Sea World introduced a new show called Pets Ahoy!  It featured dogs and cats rescued from animal shelters.  It was an amazing show!

Silly dog act!

I can't believe the things they got the cats to do!  

Let's face it, everything at Sea World is fantastic!

Getting to meet the stars of the show.

The Steel Eel
Last year Caleb was tall enough to ride the Steel Eel roller coaster, but it broke down right as we got to the front of the line.  So this year, he decided to try again.  He was super brave!!  It is quite the roller coaster and you spend most of it floating in your seat.  Grandpa almost lost his glasses when they floated right out of his pocket but luckily they floated right back to Brydon and he was able to catch them.  

Caleb was a super star and road this coaster twice in a row!

He was a bit pale afterwards but I think he had a lot of fun!

Our brave boy!

Cool Vibrations!

Cool vibrations features the talents of water skiers.  

So many fun tricks and a silly story line.

The new addition this year is this amazing contraption!  Caleb really wants one of these!

Play Time!

Nothing like cooling off in the splash pad!

Getting wet is so much fun!!

Cannery Row Caper

Before the Sea Lion show there is a fun comedy show.  Super cute!

The sea lions always do an amazing job and last year we got to meet this sea lion and go behind the scenes.  

Detective Seymour and Clyde are hot on the trial!

Of course this talented walrus is a HUGE hit!  

The Shamu Show:  One Ocean

Caleb getting excited for the Shamu show to start!  We of course sat in the mega splash zone!

I think this is one of my favorite Sea World pictures so far!  What beautiful creatures!

And of course they did a good job of getting us completely soaked!!

The killer whales are the stars of Sea World!

The Rio Loco

The rides at Sea World are a lot of fun too, and this one is Caleb's favorite!  He loves going down the river and trying to get wet under the waterfall (or getting his family wet).  

Whew!!.....Only half way through our day!

A Simpson Family Visit!

We were super excited when we got a phone call from my sister asking if her family and Grandpa Simpson could come visit us over the 4th of July week and we could all visit Sea World together.  We were excited to show them where we lived and get to experience Sea World with them.  

The Load Toads

After they arrived, Brydon was able to get us hooked up to watch the B-1 bomb loaders.  We were able to watch them in one of their loading competitions.  It was neat to see how the bombs were loaded from start to finish. 

Our cute boys watching the event!

It was interesting to see all the safety checks they had to go through and how meticulous they could be.

Grandpa Simpson was especially excited to watch this process.  He has a particular interest in bombs and knows a lot about them (in a good way :). 

The B-1's capacity to hold bombs is amazing!

Grandpa Simpson, Braydon, Roy, and Sierra

Caleb, Me, Braydon, Roy, Sierra, and Grandpa
The whole crew except Dad!  He had to work.

I am glad he set us up with such a neat visit and way to show off some things on the base.

These two cute cousins!! 

 It was so fun when Braydon recognized us as soon as he showed up and Caleb sure loves him.

The Zoo

The sloth was surprisingly awake!

The crazy catfish!  Someone came and threw a bunch of cat food in the water and they went nuts.  They are so weird!  

This curious bird thought Braydon was very interesting and came to check him out.

The animals were in rare form this trip and were all active and right by the fences.  

This cougar was very interested in stalking the boys. 

Good looking kiddo!

The flamingos were nesting and had some sweet babies to show off.  It was neat to watch them with their young and sitting on the eggs.  The nests were made from dirt mounds.

Cute little gray fuzzy babies!

The Drive-In

One of our night life highlights is the local Drive-In.  After eating some yummy Texas BBQ, we loaded up grandpa's truck and headed out to watch Monster's University and Epic  The boys were excited to play outside and hang out in grandpa's truck.   

Such a fun night!!!

Two super excited boys, all ready to go to Sea World the next day!