Orlando vacation: Day 2

Our 2nd day of vacation was super fun. We spent literally the entire day at Sea World. Here is Owen's outfit....I love the plaid shorts. :o)



The first thing that we did was go to the Shark Encounter. This turned out to be O's absolute favorite thing we did during the entire vacation. He LOVED it. The Encounter was basically a HUGE tunnel that you go through and sharks are swimming all around you. Outside of the exhibit they had a shark nursery that you could look into and watch the baby sharks swim. O thought that was the coolest.thing.ever.



Watch out! Aren't his little Crocs cute? He hates them, though.



The next thing we did was go to the Shamu show. We arrived at Shamu stadium, and it was pretty packed. I noticed some seats near the front, and suggested that we sit there. Chris said, "Uh, Jen, it is labeled as the Soak Zone, we will get wet." I say, "NO way is that whale going to get water all the way up there. No way." Well, lets just say that I way underestimated Shamu's splashing power. We got drenched. And Owen didn't see it coming so he was MAD. After he got soaked, he gave Shamu the Stink Eye for the rest of the show. Poor kid.



Here is Shamy stadium. Seeing Shamu is one of the items on my "Bucket List" so I was pumped about seeing the show. It was kind of corny, but super cool to see how the trainers interacted with the whales who could literally gulp them up in one swallow.



My sad attempt at a family pic. We cut out a third of our family! Oops!




After Shamu, we went to the Penguin Exhibit. Owen decided that the stroller was something that he wanted NO part of, so he walked by himself, because, he is a big boy after all.



They had this cute little hall where you could measure yourself against a penguin. Owen is about the same size! He thought the penguins were cool.



Here are the penguins in the exhibit. This pic is for Owen's buddy Gavin. Gavin loves penguins.



See, I told you O hates those shoes. He darn near lost them about 10 times that day.



Isn't Chris so cute pushing the stroller. What a sweet dad.



We (Chris) fed the Sea Lions. Blech.




I don't think that O stopped pointing all day.



The manatees were pretty cool. Here you can see that my poor child has inherited my and Chris's curly, nappy hair. If there is a drop of moisture in the air, all 3 of us have afros. Sorry, kid.



Here is Owen at the Dolphin thing. We were viewing underwater which is why he is blue, lol.




Next we went to the Sea Lion and Otter show. It was SO funny. Owen loved when the sea lions would yell.



Dinner time! Since Owen loved the sharks so much, we got reservations for the Shark Grill, which is a restaraunt (I know that is spelled wrong, lol) that is in the shark tank. We were able to get a table that was right up next to the glass so Owen could see the sharks swimming around him. It was super neat. Here is the tank (obviously not full of sharks) that is at the front of the place. O liked those fish. He also wore is super cool shark shirt to dinner.



Not wanting to pose....yada, yada.



Owen next to the sharks!



You can see the sharks behind him, kind of.



Owen is ready to go to the hotel and go to bed. He made a total mess at the nice restaraunt. (And I swore that I would never be one of "those" families...) We cleaned up after ourselves though. Since he is a picky eater, we had to go and get him some chicken nuggets to enjoy while Mommy and Daddy enjoyed their mixed grill. Yummm. Stay tuned for day 3 of our vacation.....a trip to Target! Seriously! (And more stuff, obviously!)

Hudson

Owen's buddy Hudson came over this afternoon to get some pics taken for his birthday invitations! He will be 1 in just a few weeks. He didn't really feel like having his pictures taken, and, well, I can't blame him because my "studio" (my very, very ghetto set-up) is in Owen's playroom, so there were many more interesting things to do than stay on the backdrop and hold still. :o) We managed to get some super cute pics though. My job was easy, seeing as how Hudson is just as cute as can be! Thanks to our friends Kristen and Joel for letting me practice on your little man! See you this weekend!

Orlando vacation: Day 1

Here is the 1st post of several, documenting our first trip as a family. We had SO much luggage. We had O's car seat, the stroller, 2 checked bags, a carry on, my purse, and the diaper bag. Oh ya, and Owen, who hates to be in the stroller and would much rather walk, er, run in the opposite direction in which we need to travel. Darn independent toddler. I was in charge of Owen and the stroller, and Chris was in charge of the rest. Owen made it through security okay, and we even had to take off his little shoes, lol. I had to hold back the jokes about what size of bomb would fit into a baby's size 5-wide shoe because I heard that you get arrested if you even mention the word "bomb" in an airport.

Here is Owen, watching our plan pull up to the hallway thing. He was pretty fascinated by the planes.

He was also fascinated by my purse, like always. I have no idea what it is about my purse that he loves. We gave him an old purse and filled it with little toys (I probably shouldn't admit that here, lol) but he won't play with that one. It has to be mommy's purse, or NO purse!

On our way! O was a complete angel during the flight. Apparently since he has tubes in his ears the pressure doesn't bother him, and it seemed to be that way. He was awake for about 20 minutes at the beginning of the flight, and then slept the rest of the flight. It was heavenly. If you look closely behind us, you will see 3 young boys. They were traveling by themselves, and they kept buying Monster Energy Drinks from the flight attendant. I am sure that the caregiver who picked them up in Orlando REALLY appreciated that!

Sleepy little boy. He is such a cuddle bug!



Here is O in Orlando! He read his book for about 1 minute before he was sick of being in his stroller. He was ready to party in Orlando International Airport!



Our hotel! We were upgraded to a room with an exterior balcony which was awesome! I am a *tad* overprotective though, and was nervous about taking Owen out on the balcony, lest he jump out of our arms and over the railing. You know how often that happens....



Our view of Sea World. It was a 4 minute walk from our hotel room to the entrance of Sea World. SCORE! Even though we were in Orlando (Disney mania) we didn't do Disney. We figured that Owen would just be scared of the characters, and he is too young to go on the rides. Right now he is so into animals so we got tickets to Sea World (6 day pass) and Busch Gardens. Busch Gardens is pretty much like a zoo/theme park, so that was awesome. When I blog about Busch Gardens, you will see some pretty hysterical video.



I made Chris keep Owen way back from the railing, because I am completely rational. O was getting pretty excited by this point, he was pointing at Sea World, and doing his nervous giggle. Chris had to change before we did anything because it was HOT, HOT, HOT!

Here is another view of our room. It was freaking huge! Plenty of room for Owen to run around. I could have done without the coffee table with the super-sharp edges, but whatever.


We had to explore the hotel. It was the Renaissance Resort, and I was a little nervous about staying there, because although it is a 4-star hotel, I had read some mixed reviews on Tripadvisor.com. However, I am an extremely picky person when it comes to hotels, and this hotel was GREAT. Our room was very, very clean, the people were nice, the restaurants were good, it was close to Sea World, and they forgot to charge us for parking the entire time! Yipee!



After we got settled in our hotel room, we had to make a WalMart run to buy food for Owen. He is an extrememly picky eater, and will only consistently eat about 5 things. It is pretty awesome and convienent. This WalMart trip wound up consuming our entire evening, thanks to a faulty GPS. It took us to a WalMart in the 'hood of Orlando. On our last day of the trip we were driving to Dunkin' Donuts 1 mile from our hotel. We took a new route from the back of the hotel, turned the corner, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! A WalMart was literally 45 seconds away from our hotel the entire time. And it was a nice WM too, where I didn't have to bathe Owen when we left.



One bonus about having a Sea World view, was that we were able to see the fireworks every night. They had a beautiful display every night at 10:00. You can barely see the fireworks here, because our Point and Shoot camera isn't that great. :o)

Here is Owen, watching the fireworks! He liked them, but was more interested in going to bed. He had to rest up for the next day of vacation....our first day at SEA WORLD!!!

We dyed eggs with Owen this afternoon! It was SO MUCH FUN. His gal pal Izzy was going to come over, but was a tad crabby, so she stayed home. Probably a good thing, seeing as how Owen turned into a no-nonsense egg dyer. He wound up spilling an entire cup of egg dye, breaking a dozen eggs, throwing eggs across the kitchen and turning his bathtub blue after his bath. What an experience!
At first, he wasn't sure he liked the dye. He would poke his little finger in the water, and pull it out and squeal. As you can see, I found this to be pretty dang funny. He was being quite a sissy at first!
But then he got more adventurous and decided that it looked kind of fun...
And then he decided that he REALLY liked it.


Trying to sneak a sip of egg dye. Don't call CPS, we didn't let him taste it!!!



Getting the hang of it...

I had to really make a big deal out of him dying the eggs...he wasn't a big fan of his hands turning colors at first. He would look at his hands and whine and show us that they weren't "right." Luckily a little bit of cheering helped him get into it.


Tasting the eggs....not so good.
He was so funny....after he got the hang of "dying" the eggs by dropping them into the cups, he started taking them out of the cups and putting them back into the carton. BUT, he would only allow 4 eggs to be in the carton at one time. If there were 4 eggs, he would close the lid to the carton. If we tried to put another egg in, he would take it out and close the lid. What a weirdo! :o)
Owen also learned how much fun it is to *throw* the eggs toward the dye. Of course, he missed and just wound up smashing most of the eggs into smitherines. You can see the egg in flight here...
Throwing, again. This was pretty much the coolest thing for him. And you can see another airborn egg. Maybe he will be a pitcher and earn mommy and daddy lots of money....hmm. On that note, Owen wants baseballs for his next birthday. We need to start training.


Oh, that dye running down the arm....
He looked like a tye-died toddler!
Daddy gave him a bath after this, and miraculously 99% of the dye came off!!
Owen's beautiful masterpieces. Obviously these eggs aren't safe for human consumption anymore. Oh well, we don't really like eggs anyways!

Sorry for the randomness and rambling in this post....it is past O's bedtime which means it is past MY bedtime. We all go back to school/work/daycare tomorrow after our fun week in Orlando, and we ARE NOT READY. Yes, I said it. I AM NOT READY TO GO BACK TO WORK. I need another week or six of vacation. I tell you, taking a vacation makes you need another vacation. Also, if you have been reading my blog, you know that I have no idea on how to upload pictures in an order that makes sense. Is there any way to upload them to blogger and then sort them into the order that you want them to appear? If you know of a way, please let me know. I hate when my photos don't appear in the order that I want them to. Drives me nuts. Have a good evening!