Aside from thinking that the dolphin show was a little hokey, I was really impressed with the attraction. It had a lot to offer without being too big and it was easy to navigate.

We really enjoyed every exhibit and I ended up taking a lot of pictures so the girls could remember the experience later.

There were several variety of jelly fish, all of which were neat to watch.

There was this really neat tank that was suppose to mimic a reef close to the shore (I think). The waves would come in overhead and you could watch what that looked like from below. Mallory’s and Tessa’s expressions in the photo below is from watching the wave crash above (not sure what’s going on with Chelsea. ).

We also liked watching the tank with the sea horses.

They had just a few dolphins and beluga whales, both of which the girls were excited to see.

There were several interactive exhibits where you could touch stingrays, star fish, and other sea creatures. Mallory and I were the only ones interested in getting up close and personal.

The penguin exhibit was fun because they set it up like you were in their habitat.

My favorite area of the aquarium is their largest tank. It held huge manta rays, whale sharks and grouper. I was amazed by the sheer size of these fish. I could have sat and watched them hours. It was very soothing.

While beautiful, the Lion Fish are dangerous to humans and the waters along the East Coast.

There were even a couple of albino alligators.

Tessa is proving more and more how close she is getting to being a two year old.

She is getting more opinionated and made sure we knew that she did not want to be carried unless absolutely necessary. She really enjoyed the visit because every where we turned, she saw “hoo-ALES!” – her favorite. (whales = dolphins/whales/fish to her).

I’m so glad we got the chance to visit the Georgia Aquarium. It was time and money well spent.

We went to Sea World in San Antonio in August and the girls absolutely loved it. The tickets we bought in August were good for the rest of the year, so we decided another trip to Sea World would be a good idea. Since we used Jonathan’s hotel points, our main expenses were food and gas (it is 12 hours round trip for us).

When we went in August, it was crazy hot, practically unbearable, but we still had fun and drank a ton of water and lemonade. This time the weather was perfect and the park was not crowded at all.

For this trip, we spent two days at Sea World which means we fed the dolphins twice,

saw the dolphin and whale show twice

and the killer whale show twice. We also visited some of the other attractions there too, but the dolphins and whales are always our top priority. All three girls love the dolphins and whales. (Tessa has a little stuffed killer whale that she absolutely loves and “whoo-ale” was one of Tessa’s first words.)

The park has been promoting their new watermark Aquatica that’s scheduled to open next May. They had this small tank with baby (4 month old) sting rays that you could pet. Aquatic is going to be a water park with animal interaction. I am sure we will be back to see what it’s all about.

Mallory loves riding the little Shamu Express roller coaster and did so many times.

Chelsea even worked up the nerve to ride one time this visit.

Mallory willingly went with me on the The Journey to Atlantis ride which is part coaster part water ride but after we got off of it, she said it hurt her tummy and she didn’t like it one bit. Mallory and Chelsea liked watching the big ‘boat’ come down from the The Journey to Atlantis ride because it would almost splash them (they were hoping to get wet, but we wouldn’t let them).

Compared to when we went in August, this trip was a much different experience for Tessa. In August, Tessa (18 months) still wasn’t walking. She sat in the stroller nearly the whole time and was happy to be there.

This time, at 21 months and walking, she did not want to be in the stroller which meant both Mallory and Chelsea got to ride in it. I let her walk a good bit, but she is still extremely slow (and walks like she has had a few too many drinks), so I carried her most of the time.

The baby girl had a hard time by the end of the day because she can still take two naps a day but really does not nap well on the go.

However, all of that walking can wear a girl out and on one of the days at the park, she conked out in the stroller.

We changed hotels on Friday, the last night of our stay in S.A., and made our way into the city to stay on the Riverwalk to be near where the Christmas boat parade takes place along the river. We stayed an extra night in San Antonio because of the parade. There seemed to be a lot of hype for the parade and we thought it best to buy tickets ($15 each) so the girls could see and so we would not have to camp out to save spots on a bridge to watch it (access to get down to the Riverwalk was limited to those who had tickets).

The parade was not quite what we expected. Our high school homecoming floats were better than the boat “floats” in this parade.

Jonathan and I thought it was pretty lame but the girls seemed to enjoy it.

Just a block away from the Riverwalk down from our hotel, the Nutcracker was performing. Too bad we did not go to that instead!

After four days of fun, the girls slept well Friday night. It is funny to see how they sleep together, since they were in the same room as us (Tessa slept in our pack-n-play in a closed off part of the suite). You can see that Mallory is touching Chelsea with her hand and foot in her sleep. And you can see the big dolphins they got on their first trip in August and the smaller dolphin and whale they got on this trip. If Mallory becomes a marine biologist/marine animal trainer when she grows up, I would not be surprised.

Oddly, one of the things that the girls enjoyed the most on our trip was using the key card to open the hotel door and also pushing the buttons for the elevator. We practically had to assign the tasks at the beginning of each day to ensure it was fair for both girls.

On our way out of town, we drove by the Alamo. Luckily, I convinced Jonathan to stop and the bigger girls and I got out to take a couple of pictures while Jonathan drove around. Please pardon the comfy clothes and crazy hair of the girls; we were prepping for a six hour road trip. Also, I forgot to pack another shirt for Chelsea, so the shirt she is wearing is actually one of Tessa’s dresses. At least the pants match, even if the “shirt” doesn’t fit.  

Mallory was interested in seeing more of the Alamo (we talked about it the previous day), but we were ready to get back home and I know Chelsea and Tessa could have cared less, so we skipped the tour this time. I know we will be back to San Antonio before too long, so we will be sure to visit it then.

We had two princesses and a frog at our house for Halloween.

Our princesses had a fantastic time trick-or-treating with Jonathan around the neighborhood and collected a nice little selection of treats. Tessa helped them eat the treats they couldn’t have.

Chelsea was excited to be a purple princess, especially because of the hat. She is our candy girl and would happily eat skittles for breakfast.

Since our Halloween day was so busy, I didn’t get a chance to redo Mal’s hair from the morning before she went out trick-or-treating. We’ll call her look royally messy. As far as treats go, Mallory repeated her behavior from last year and picked pretzels as her first treat of choice.

Our frog did not get a nap on our busy Halloween day so she was ‘done’ before it was time to trick-or-treat. She went to bed shortly after we snapped pictures so I stayed home to hand out candy pretzels to the kids (and the occasional adult!) who came by.

If you hadn’t noticed already, we try to get the most out of our Halloween costumes, so they get passed down from year to year. At some point I’m guessing the younger girls will want to be more original than that. For the time being, they are happy with my suggestions.

The older girls took swimming lessons for the first time this summer. They attended a two-week/ten-day camp at AquaKids and loved every minute of it. As soon as they woke up in the morning, they would ask me, “how long until swimming?” to which I would reply, “ten hours.”

Chelsea was in the Three-1 class.

By the middle of the second week she could independently swim a couple of feet under water. That is a major accomplishment for a girl that doesn’t like to get her face wet. She can now also jump into the water, turn around and swim back to the edge of the pool on her own.

Mallory was in the Preschool-1 class and on day two was already swimming under water on her own.

By the end of the second week she could swim across the short width of the pool, independently take breaths while swimming, float on her back, back fin (swim on her back with baby kicks), and go down the big slide and swim to the side of the pool on her own.

We decided to break our newly introduced “one sport at a time” rule and the girls will take once-a-week swimming lessons in the fall in addition to gymnastics.

Mallory did so well in her lessons that she’ll move up two levels to Preschool-3.

 And Chelsea will be in the Three-2 class. Yay for swimming!

Via Flickr:
I have 16 potholders to finish binding in the next couple of days for the girls’ teachers end-of-year gifts (there are eight teachers between two of them). That’s a lot of corners to miter (64 to be exact)!

The park has a nice play structure for kids, but it also has a pond with ducks and right now there are several different litters (?) of ducklings.

The mama ducks were very patient and didn’t mind that we handled

(and re-handled) their babies.

The girls loved being able to feed, touch and pet the ducks (we washed our hands well afterward).

Even the littlest of our girls had fun.

I am not sure what this little girl thought of those fluffy creatures.

We even found two nests with eggs among the cypress knees.

We will make it back to this park in the future for sure!

Jonathan was in town for about 24 hours on Mother’s Day weekend and several of those hours were spent putting the tramp together. We both ended up with blisters on our hands from assembly, but otherwise it went together fairly well despite incomplete instructions.

We got the biggest tramp that would easily fit in our small backyard (a 12′ one).

Needless to say, the girls LOVE jumping and have jumped on it every day since it was put together. They are also really good about zipping up the door to keep from falling off.

Here’s to a summer filled with lots of jumping (and no broken bones!)!

This is Mallory’s second season of playing soccer. And today’s game was the second to last of this season. Her U5 team is the Grasshoppers. It has been fun to watch, between this season and last, how the girls are really understanding how to play the game.

Mallory really likes soccer. She loves to practice in the backyard. And I know she enjoys getting to spend time with her teammates at practices and games. Chelsea and Tessa do a great job of cheering her on during both.

{ Check out those teeth in Scrunch Face's mouth! She has had three for awhile but for the last few weeks several more are making their way through her gums. You can kind of see them in this picture and she has been a trooper through it. }

As much as Mallory likes soccer, it is quite apparent when she is out on the field that she has no clue how to be aggressive. She has gotten better this season going after the ball, but then so have all of the other girls. She has scored a handful of goals this season, to give her the credit she deserves.  I do believe she understands the basics of the game and her skills are pretty good during team practice and when we practice in the backyard. One of her first words was “key” (for kick) and since before Chelsea was born when Mal was 20 months, she could kick a ball back and forth with us. We always thought she would like soccer, but I don’t know that you can teach aggression. I guess as long as she’s having fun, that’s all that matters.

We just had Mallory’s fifth birthday party (after having to postpone it a week due to illness). I think it was a big hit with her friends and her. Mallory invited four classmates (plus little sisters of two them who are Chelsea’s age). We did a princess make-over party which I was only able to pull off with the help of the other moms.

One of the moms is really good at doing little girls’ hair, so I asked her (ahead of time) if she wouldn’t mind doing all of the girls’ hair. Thankfully she said she’d love to and she did an excellent job!

Then, the rest of the moms either painted fingernails/toenails or put a little bit of make-up on the girls.

We added five candles to a big chocolate-y rice crispie treat (made with ‘normal’ semi-sweet chocolate chips that just happen not to have dairy. These chocolate chips are from Trader Joe’s and one of Chelsea’s preschool teachers bought a bag for Chelsea when she was on vacation. Isn’t that sweet?) and we sang Happy Birthday to Mallory.

I asked Mallory what she wished for, and without missing a beat, she said, “a udah-corn (unicorn).”

Then Mallory got to open up her gifts.

Her gifts were either princess-themed or Barbie-themed and she couldn’t have been more thrilled.

The party was a lot of fun and it was neat to see the girls so excited about being pampered for the day.