Saturday, November 22, 2008

It's VISTA-tastic

That was aA movie made up of freeze shots from my laptop's camera, as you can tell the kids love it. And it turns out VISTA isn't as horrible as I thought it would be, it even came with the software to make this little movie. Too fun!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Aquatica, SeaWorld Orlando, and Halloween - Friday to Friday it was a busy week...

I'm not sure if these are the best photos from the past week's adventures, but at least it's a start. Besides, if I didn't put something up now, I'm not sure when I'd get back to it.
Our whirlwind Florida vacation was super awesome! - No, we didn't do anything Disney - While we were there we checked out the new SeaWorld Aquatica water park & SeaWorld Orlando.

Aquatica was lots of fun, full of splash pools, water slides, and plenty of sunchairs to relax on if the excitement got to be too much.



The water park also had a few animal exhibits and interaction areas - here's Tayne with a lizard.

And a neat feature was the lazy river that took you past 2 fish tanks and the Commerson's dolphins (pictured further down) Here's a picture of the whole group (Troy, Tayne, Troy's Parents, and Pallas) before going around.




I think Tayne's favorite was walkabout waters - a giant water playground, I think it took him a couple of hours to explore everything to his satisfaction. Pallas got some splashing around in too.




Here are the fun little Commerson's dolphins - they were so cute, almost like little Shamus (probably why they chose them for this park) -There was a nice area where you could watch them underwater and that tube you see is part of a slide that runs through the tank (supposedly so you can see the dolphins as you go streaking past, but I think it's probably more entertaining for the dolphins)

Moving on to SeaWorld - Here's Tayne with some of the costumed characters they had for the Halloween trick-or-treating (Did you guess it was a school of fish and their teacher?)




Pallas and I were busy playing in the sandbox while Troy and Tayne went exploring, but as you can see they had to get in on the grainy fun.



Did I mention there were bubbles everywhere on the way to Shamu (yes, including in kids eyes)


Both kids had a great time though, here's Pallas and Tayne waiting for Troy and his mom to come by on an insane roller coaster (it not only flipped them upside down, it also went underground 3 times)

Here's Pallas enjoying some of the animals (Seals and Sea Lions and weird looking birds)

And now on to Halloween -
Here's Tayne at the spooky house -

And Pallas at the community carnival - she had a great time and lots of admirers (I think other people took her picture more times than we did - but to be fair I had to keep chasing after her as she toddled around)

Here she is on the move -