4th and 5th day of vacation: Sea World and Orlando Temple

Life has been very busy

(and that's an understatement)

but good.

I love being busy going on family vacations,

spending time with my new niece,

doing another triathlon,

making Easter memories,

visiting a new state (Texas),

helping out at my sister's bridal shower,

performing in my orchestra concert.

Those are the main high lights of the last few weeks.

More about some of those things later.

For now, here are some more vacation photos.

For the fourth day of vacation we went to Sea World again.

We saw three shows as well as many other attractions.

We all saw many animals and things we had never seen before.

I got to touch a sting ray,

Elliot and Avery got to meet and hug Elmo,

we saw sharks, flamingos, penguins, aligators, turtles, and more.

It was amazing!

After everything we had a lovely swim in our back yard.

Elliot has gotten so confident in the water, thanks to Rich.

* *

On Sunday after church we visited the Orlando, Florida Temple.

My mom keeps track of which temples

all her children and grandchildren have been to and/or done temple work in

and I have been to the least out of all her children.

It's nice to add another one on the list.

There was no visitor's center so there wasn't

much to do but walk around and take pictures

so that's just what we did.

What better place to take pictures of your family

than at a temple?

second day of vacation: {continued}

I wanted to take some time to sort of

scrapbook these pictures while I had a chance.

We had a blast at SeaWorld.

It was a great way to spend our anniversary

and Avery's birthday.

Elliot got to experience his first roller coaster

and Avery her first ride - the teacups.

They both thoroughly enjoyed it!

Below was the famous Shamu show.

It's amazing how intelligent killer whales are.

We sat in the "splash" seats so we got a little wet.

The best way to cool down after walking

all over SeaWorld was to swim.

Good thing we have a pool in the backyard!

Rich taught Elliot how to swim.

It's a big deal because he used to not even get in the

water and now he's swimming unaccompanied and he loves it!

In celebration on our 5 years together

Andrew and I went out for dinner.

Unfortunately, there weren't many resturants

where we stayed so we had to settle

for Cracker Barrel. We both have bad memories

there but this dinner made up for it a little.

Dinner became a wonderful end

to a wonderful day.