Miami Seaquarium

We got to go to the Miami Seaquarium on Saturday! They were having a Mother's Day deal where moms got in free and her guests got in for 50% off! It cut costs by about seventy bucks, so we were really excited to go! We had heard that it was a little rundown and not that great, but we loved it. Not SeaWorld--it is much smaller--but it is really amazing and definitely something we would love to do again!

Watching the sea lions and seals.

Unfortunately, due to piano lessons and other commitments, our trip was cut short. We spent about three hours there and needed about three more I think to fully explore and see it all. Ruth was pretty sad about not being able to stay to play at the splash pad--it was enormous and had all sorts of playground equipment, it looked awesome! Cute story: When she was upset and crying I kneeled down beside her and told her we had to go to pick up Sister R (a lady in our ward that Ruthie adores) because she did not have a car and her daughter couldn't take her grocery shopping today, so she needed us to drive her so she could get food. Ruth was a champ and calmed down a bit. Later, we were pulling into our neighborhood, Ruth got very concerned "Aren't we going to Sister R's??!?" "Yes, but we are stopping at home first." "But MOM! She needs us! She doesn't even have a car!!!" Sweet mom moment, right there. She also told Sister R to put on her seat belt during our drive, and I had to laugh a bit. Gotta love 3 yr olds!

Back to the Seaquarium. They have four main shows that are scheduled throughout the day, several little presentations, and then some areas that you can just watch the fish/animals. We missed one of the four main shows JUST as we got there, and couldn't stay for the next viewing. We have to go back, because we heard it was the best one! We did see the other three, and it was such a blast!

The first show we saw was the Flipper Dolphin show--it was so great! Dolphins are so beautiful! I want to swim with one SO BAD! (overload of animal photos, feel free to scroll fast!)

Watching the show. It was a really hot day.

They are just so beautiful!

Their flips were SO HIGH!

Sibling lovin'. 

See her arm underneath? He jumped RIGHT OVER her.

Riding a dolphin. That is so cool.

The one annoying thing is that you have to leave your stroller at the entrance to every show. There are fifty billion strollers, and we had *snuck in* a big bag of lunch food. It was a lot to carry around to each show. Fortunately, we were forewarned of the extreme food prices there and the lack of stroller checking, so it was worth the extra baggage.

Will thought he was just hilarious switching his and daddy's hat.

I really, really loved the sea lion show. They had the funniest little skit put together and lots of 'dancing' and music and punny jokes. I thought it was super cute, plus the tricks that the sea lion could do were so cool!

He looked like an inchworm moving along, it was so funny!

Love those two.

The last show was the killer whale show. Apparently it is HUGELY controversial right now, because her pod has been found and survived and everyone thinks she should be let back in the wild. There were a bunch of protesters in the parking lot as we were leaving.

This is the only place in the WORLD (I'm pretty positive thats what they said) that you can see a whale swimming with a dolphin. They are Pacific white-sided dolphins and they are really cool. Lolita, the whale, weighs 7,000 pounds!!!! This show was cool just because you were watching a whale. Because really, that is awesome.

There was a lot of music, Ruthie stood back here and danced through the entire show. 

The cool dolphins.

MASSIVE.

We opted not to get wet, but it was pretty awesome for those first few rows. 

Now riding a whale would be AMAZING. 

I was so excited I caught this.

We stopped to pet some manta rays on our way out.

A few things we kind of saw--the shark channel, the tropical reef, and kind of the manatees. We missed the Crocodile Flats, Tropical Wings, and we just walked out through the Tropical Fish Aquariums. We definitely need to go back, but we loved it! What a great day!