Florida

Our flight to Florida was uneventful, hooray! The biggest drama was trying to find a way to keep the ear buds from the head set in Sean's ears so he could watch a movie.

I remembered I had a couple of Iron Man band aids in my purse so we taped those suckers in his ears and all was well.

Our plane didn't get in until midnight and it took what seemed like forever to get our rental car. It was after 1 when we got to the hotel. Once at the hotel the check in was taking a long time. I asked "is there a problem?" He said "I only have rooms with one king bed, I don't have any rooms with two beds." "Oh for Pete's sake, just give us a room with one bed Sean will sleep with us." "Are you sure, that would make it so much easier" he asked? He offered to bring in a roll away we declined. He was going through the cancellations trying to find a room. "Yes, I'm sure one bed will be fine!" We went to our room and fell into bed! We had an early morning planned at Sea World. About an hour later I heard a loud gurgling sound. I know that sound, it's the one Sean makes before he hurls! I was up about two seconds before the spew so I was able to catch most of it on a pillow. I threw the pillow case on the floor, cleaned Sean up and we were asleep again within minutes. About 45 minutes later I didn't hear anything I just felt the warm wet as it hit my face. Awesome. Sean was screaming. I cleaned him up, surveyed the damage. I was now wishing we had a room with two beds so we could move to a clean one! I thought about calling for clean sheets but it was 5 am and we had to be up in a couple of hours so I cleaned Sean up, threw some towels over the barf laid on top of them and went back to sleep. I was doubtful that we would make it to Sea World at 8:30. At 7 Sean woke up happy. We all took showers, let the hotel know about the lovely mess he had made and went to breakfast. Sean didn't eat but he did drink some juice.

Off to Sea World we went

We were met by an orange footed penguin

We bought a "family fun VIP tour". It was worth every penny. We got to feed dolphins.  We were able to touch them too. It was so awesome. We had a tour guide who took us behind the scenes of sea world. We got a personal visit with Santa. Sean was so excited. He was disappointed the night before that Santa didn't meet us at the airport. Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas but all Sean could do was stare at him and say "you're Santa!" Santa gave him a bell like the one on Polar Express. It was quite the gift.

The dolphins had a lot to say to Sean. I don't speak dolphin but I believe they were saying, "Give us the fish little boy!"

We fed the sea lions too. We couldn't get as close to them as we did the dolphins. Apparently Sea Lions have big teeth and bad attitudes. They were grateful for the food. The birds kept trying to steal the food.

Did you know that penguins poop shoots out five feet from their bums? This is important because if you are going to pet a penguin you don't want to get behind it's bum. They shoot their poop out so it won't get on them! I had never touched a penguin so that was fun. This penguins name is Mario. You pet them with two fingers because they feel like they are being touched by another penguins beak. I missed AJ at this point because he was such a penguin loving kid. He would have loved to pet a penguin when he was little. I'm not sure at 21 that he would care so much but it was  a neat thing to do. If the mom penguins aren't taking good care of their eggs Sea World replaces them with wooden eggs and incubate the real ones. Sneaky Sea World.

The other cool thing about the tour was you got to skip to the front of lines. The Polar Express ride was a little too scary for Sean so we just walked through the exhibit. We loved the Shamu show.  There was a three month old baby whale that hung out with it's mom while she performed. That's a real working mother. Whales breast feed for two years. That would make the World Health Organization happy. Dolphins breast feed for a year. We went to the dolphin nursery. Sean wanted to ride the Shamu roller coaster but Don and I were both remembering the night before and said no. He didn't eat anything all day, just Popsicles and Gatorade but he was a trooper.

On the way out we ran into another penguin. Sean was very observant and told us this penguin had yellow feet and not orange. I would have never noticed. Sean fell asleep in the stroller on the way out of the park. It was a terrific day!