wow, i just realized it's been a while since i last blogged. i'm not really sure where the time went...it seems to have just slipped by.

last night, we had the honor of dining with shamu for sky's birthday celebration (it was supposed to happen last week but with ryder throwing up for four days, we rescheduled it to yesterday). it was super fun and food was pretty yummy. wish we had more time with the whales but still cool to see them up so close. the staff brought sky a birthday cake and sang happy birthday to her and...i thought she was going to cry. it was rather funny.

after dinner with shamu, we spent the evening walking around sea world. the kids had so much fun and it was great b/c it wasn't very crowded, being a weekday and evening.

some highlights of the evening:
- the best thing was just hearing my kids' laughter. each one of them had such a blast and it was so awesome to see and hear.
- it was great to share the time with steve's mom (or as sky calls her "daddy's mom"), who is visiting for a few days from NV
- the sea lions, who usually i find rather boring, had gotten a little figurine toy and two of them were playing with it, one keeping it from the other. at one point, a sea world staff member was trying to get the toy away with a net and one of the sea lions barked at her and quickly swam off with it. i found the dynamics between the two sea lions so interesting and then the fact that they played with this little figurine toy and didn't eat it just amazed me (if you look really hard at the sea lion photo, you can see the little toy on the rock [click the photo to enlarge it]).

all in all, we had such an amazing time and sky's birthday celebration...well, it continues tonight.

and no, my butt's not really that big (having fun with the funny mirror, which my kids loved) ;-)