Texas Part One: Sea World

We spent last week in San Antonio, Texas with Sam's family for the biannual Mangum Family Reunion. We had a great time with everyone, and I think it may have been my favorite reunion so far. I was a little nervous about going Texas in July, but (joy of joys!) it was actually cooler in Texas than it was in DC last week. (Not that it was cool by any means.)
Our camera has been on the fritz, but just a couple days before we left for Texas, Sam got the new iphone 4 for his birthday. The camera on the iphone is actually better than our Canon camera. So I only took one picture with our regular camera, and then we just had fun using the iphone all week. We took hundreds of pictures and tons of video. I'm just picking a couple highlights for the blog.
We went to Sea World two of the days, and as I could have guessed, Bria loooooved it.
Part of this was because I pretty much let Bria eat or drink whatever she wanted while were in Texas (with the obvious exception of soda). She wouldn't drink water at Sea World, and in a desperate attempt to keep her hydrated, I let her guzzle lemonade and fruit punch all day. Part of my soul died a little, but at least she didn't get dehydrated. (Right?!?!)On the first day, we took Bria to the little kids splash pad, where Bria practically died from joy running around in the water. She has very recently gained courage when it comes to water (like, the day or two before we left), so I was a little astonished when she ran around sticking her head in full blasts of water. She was lucky her Aunt Rachel was willing to take her around in the water (because I didn't want to get wet). I think it was the highlight of Bria's life.


At first I made her wear her cousin Mallory's sandals (I made her wear full on shoes and socks the first day thinking it would be more comfortable), because I have public water place germ phobias, but then, like with the fruit punch, I turned a blind eye and let her go barefoot.

We also saw two sea lion shows, which thrilled Bria to no end:

We also saw Shamu twice. Bria had a love/hate relationship with the shows, because there is a lot of down time between tricks, and a lot of dancing and music by overenthusiastic performers, but, hey, I think she did pretty well considering her age.

We saw penguins:
And, the coolest part of Sea World-- we got to feed dolphins. As we were walking in to Sea World the second day, and had yet to see the dolphins, Bria kept saying "I'm coming dolphins! I'm coming dolphins!" It was awesome. And they did not disappoint. You can buy fish and then walk right up to a tank and feed the dolphins. So cool!And once we ran out of fish, Bria kept saying "I don't have any fish, buddy. Sorry!"
Poor guy just wants some fish from me. Sorry, buddy!