Flashback Friday: San Diego/Sea World April 2008

There are a few reasons why I am going to start featuring a Flashback Friday post on our family blog. 1) Our blog only dates back to May 2009, and we have been around a lot longer than that. 2) I am hardly ever scrapbooking these days. 3) I am already planning on printing my blog into a nice hardbound book every year. 4) I think it will be fun to revisit some past memories that we have shared together. So to kick off this feature, for the month of April we will be revisiting our family trip to San Diego in April 2008. At first I was planning on doing this in one post and then I remembered the sheer number of photos that we took on that trip and figured it was better to break it up over 4 weeks instead. Don't worry, you will thank me later.
We were in San Diego for about 5 days, we hit Sea World over two different days.
(Nate 32, Ronda 29, Ethan 8, Ally 6, Ryland 4)

The very first thing we did when we got to Sea World was ride Journey to Atlantis.

Ally and Ethan were sure that they were ready for the big drop. I am not so sure they were. It took about a half an hour to calm Ally down and move on with our lives. She has declared she will never ride that ride again. Time will tell.

Where were Ryland and Daddy? They opted to hang out by an aquarium that held an endangered species of Dolphin. We can't remember their name but we do remember that they swim upside down.

This photo was taken outside of the Sea Otter exhibit. Boy did they stink.

Ryland and Ally opted to feed the Sea Otters some small dead fish. Ewww, I know. Ethan didn't want anything to do with that. Smart kid if you ask me.


This was at the Tide Pools where we got a chance to hold star fish.


This was while we were waiting to watch the Dolphin Discovery show. That was so fun to watch, even if it was hotter than Hades, so much for going in the spring time for cooler weather.

We were in San Diego for about 5 days so we actually spent 2 different days at Sea World. On our last day there we were saddened to hear that one of the Dolphins there had been in a training accident off site and had died. The kids were heartbroken. We decided to get Evelyn (who was home in Utah with Grandma and Grandpa Hale) a stuffed dolphin to remember her by. We named it Sharky after the Dolphin who had passed away. As you can see that stuffed animal is still loved, this photo was taken just this week.
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We really enjoyed watching the Shamu Believe show as well. It is amazing how big and beautiful the Orca whales are.

It was so hot that we opted to sit in the splash zone. Ryland and I were the lucky recipients of the majority of the water. We were a lot wetter than we looked. It felt great!