Our trip to San Antonio started out with an interesting turn of events – there was snow on the ground here in north Texas. Here's a picture of our house as we were leaving town.
We got to San Antonio a little later than we wanted to, but we headed straight to SeaWorld. The first thing we did when we got there was go to Dolphin Cove to feed the dolphins. I'm glad we did that then because the opportunity was never right the rest of the weekend.
After feeding the dolphins, we made it to the dolphin and beluga show. Mara loves belugas and would sing the "Baby Beluga" song every time she saw them during the show.
Mara surprised both of us with her excitement over the Shamu Express roller coaster. She wanted to ride it when we were at SeaWorld back in October, but she was just barely too short (had to be 38 inches). This time, she was well within the range to ride it. John went ahead and took her in line for the coaster, but both of us though she would back out at the last second. But nope, she didn't. In fact, she rode with her hands held high up in the air. As soon as she got off, she asked to ride it again. On Sunday, we let her ride it one last time, and she requested to ride in the very front car. While I'm surprised by how much she liked it, I'm glad she really enjoyed the ride.
On Saturday, we decided to do the Shamu Up-Close tour. This was similar to the Dine with Shamu that we had originally planned to do, but we didn't eat. Instead, we got a tour of the backstage area where they keep the killer whales. It was really interesting, and we even got to meet one of the trainers. After the tour, the baby whale, Halyn, was out in the show tank swimming around. Because we were part of the tour, they let us go up to the glass to get an up-close look at her. There was another girl about Mara's age who was on the tour with her parents. Halyn kept coming up to the glass where Mara and the little girl were, and I think they were all enamoured with each other. What's funny is that Halyn's only about 6 months younger than Mara (she was born October 2, 2005).
(Check out those blue eyes on the whale.) 
After the tour, we got close seats for the show. They were in the "Splash Zone," and our tour guide said we would probably get a little wet. The seats were fantastic, though (third row right in front of a platform), and I was beginning to get confident we wouldn't get splashed because of the platform. Boy, was I wrong. We were safe until the finale when one of the whales came in front of us and did its tail splash right in front of us. John caught the brunt of the splash, and Mara got pretty wet herself. She did not appreciate getting wet.
When we went back to the Shamu show on Sunday, Mara kept jumping when the whales would splash because she was expecting to get wet again. She finally settled down part way through the show when she realized we were safe.
All in all, it was a fun trip. We'll definitely head back there at least one more time this year.
Before I go, I wanted to leave you with one more picture of Mara with some giraffe statues that she insisted on getting a picture with.
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