The growing Roza family: Braving MW on a weekend

On Saturday, Sept 15th, the 3 of us met up with my sister's family at Marine World for a day of fun. Ever since MW cut back to weekends only in mid August, we had not been able to go. I think it had been about 1.5 months since I had taken Lilah. So I was anxious to get her back there to enjoy the animals, sights and rides. We visited the seals and sea lions first, but their enclosure was being cleaned and we had no viewing access to the animals at that point. Then we checked out one of our favorites...the penguins! As usual, we all enjoyed our time there. Next, we took the kids on a few rides. Unfortunately, Carson still couldn't ride any of the rides except the carousel, since he isn't able to walk yet. But he sure did enjoy that carousel ride! And so did Lilah and Kai! Edward and Shaun took the kids on the carousel while Shea and I stayed behind taking pictures and video. The two daddies also took Lilah and Kai on the train ride. Then Shea took Kai and Lilah on the helicopter ride, which is one of Lilah's favorites.

The shark aquarium is another highlight for us and we made sure to swing by and say hi to the sharks and fish. The 3 kids loved watching the sharks slowly swim by and the small schools of fish zip by. Next, it was off to the seal/sea lion show for some entertainment and lunch. Since the show is a good 15-20 minutes long, we always snack on our lunches during this time. Well, usually we eat lunch during the Shouka killer whale show. However...Shouka has apparently been relocated to Sea World in San Diego. We didn't find this out until we arrived at MW that morning, and we were extremely sad to hear this news. Shouka's show was always one of my favorites. And the large black and white whale is really easy for young children to see from a distance, so I know Lilah always loved seeing Shouka. But Lilah also enjoyed the fun (yet very cheesy) seal/sea lion show. And what's super awesome is that Kai and Shaun got picked from the audience to pet one of the sea lions, whose name also happens to be Kai!

The butterfly house was quite crowded, making it even more difficult to catch the beautiful yet fast butterflies in action. There were so many people, and it was so humid, we didn't spend much time in there. Thankfully I did manage to snap a couple of nice pictures of a few of my favorite butterflies. After that we swung by the reptile center and Lilah was given the opportunity to hold a milk snake in her lap! She does like snakes, but she seemed confused as to why she had one in her lap. Kai, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of them! I think he held a couple of different sized snakes that day and he was in Heaven! Then we breezed by the sleeping lion and the hungry giraffes on our way to the elephant show. Once again, Lilah was getting pretty tired by this point (2:30 pm), so she wasn't totally focused on the show. We did get to see Valerie the elephant reach quite high for a banana and then eat it. We hadn't seen that trick before, so Lilah enjoyed that and still talks about how the "ella" ate the "nana". Then we headed home with one very sleepy toddler. We tried to keep her awake on the long walk to the car. We purposely took her out of the stroller and Edward carried her upright, but her eyes were still drooping. She was pretty annoyed with us by the time we got to the car! Poor baby, she just wanted her nap! And she slept the whole way home. : )

We are actually headed back to MW tomorrow (9/30) with some of our college friends who have a toddler named Darcie. She is just 2 months older than Lilah. I'm looking forward to seeing the girls enjoy the animals together. The girls first met last December, right after Christmas, but haven't seen each other since. Should be a fun, but hot, day!