06/23/09

Here is a coneflower before it blooms. I love this picture. I realize it is all green for the most part, but I just thought it was a neat shot.

I don't think I have mentioned this before but Wesley is taking speech this summer to help him with his /r/ sound. He can do the sound, but he has said it wrong for so long that he doesn't know how to do it in regular conversation. I felt that since he was nine and about to go to the third grade, something needed to change with that. I didn't want him to talk with a lazy /r/ all of his life. We go every Tuesday and it is nice to do it in the summer. He is becoming more aware of the sounds of /r/ in words and trying to correct it himself as he speaks.

Today as we were coming home from speech he and I had a most interesting conversation about God. It was one of those days I wish I had been able to record it to re-play it over and over. He started talking about space and wanted to know if we see it. I explained to him about how we see the stars and all at night is the closest we on earth get to view space. We then began talking about how God Created the world, etc.... and he said "Mom, is God sad when we sin?" I told him He was. He said "Well, we all sin everyday and that must mean that God is sad all of the time!!!" I began to explain to him that, yes, God is sad when we sin but He still loves us. I compared it to when he and Mikayla disobey me or Steve and that even though we are disappointed we still love them no matter what. I said that God gives us consequences to our behavior but we never have to doubt His love because He sent His only Son to die in our place so that when we accept that gift of salvation we could have eternal life with Him.

It was so sweet when he said "OH... well that makes a lot more sense!"

It was a deep little conversation with my "thinker." I know Mikayla grasped a lot out of it, too, even though she wasn't "in" the conversation. Those moments are what I love about being a Mommy... guiding my children closer to an understanding walk with the Lord.

Proverbs 22:6 - Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

After speech the kids were invited to swim and now have their friends over to spend the night. These are the fun spontaneous events of summer. I cherish them.

Now on to Sea World....

Waiting for the Shamu show to begin

Shamu!! They had a story on the screen of a little boy who longed to be near an Orca (Killer Whale) and then the boy "grew to a man" and one of the trainers jumps out and acts as if he is the boy in the movie. Shamu makes his entrance and it was pretty neat.

This is where Shamu jumps up to meet the trainer. That was awesome. These pictures are not going to be great because too much was happening too fast for me to get my settings right all of the time. Plus, there is motion blur, but that can't be helped! ha!

waving to the crowd

jumping as his image jumps on the screens

This was so neat when he came up on that platform area. Someone told me that when you see an Orca in captivity with the dorsal fin flopped over that it means they are not happy. I honestly don't know, but, as you can see, this guys dorsal fin is not straight up.

Splashing the front rows... we were not in the front rows. I didn't want to chance my camera getting soaked!

Jumping up high!

After the Shamu show we walked around. This is owned by Anheiser Busch so they had their Clydesdales there that pull the Budweiser wagon. (Let's just say we only wanted to see the horses... could care less about the beer.)

We all walked around looking at the different fish and such in the tanks.

This is a cow-nosed ray (right, Kevin????)

various fish/sharks

Dori from Nemo!! lol Underneath that beautiful fish is a live sand dollar! I had never seen one alive before. You may want to click the picture for a better view. :)

We finally found a real live Barking Tree Frog!! This was Wesley's Zoo Project from this past year!

Walkway under the aquarium.

Sea Lion (right???) at the Pacific Coast area

Mom, Dad, Kevin and Mikayla waiting while I walked around shooting various animals. Not all of them are included today as some I wanted to show individually.

My two guys checking out the Pacific Coast animals

The Dolphin show was awesome. They moved faster than Shamu so these pictures really WERE blurrier!

By this point we are so tired of people, scooters, strollers and general sweating that we were ready to depart for home. It was terribly hot and we knew vacation had pretty much ended....

Before we left, though, we went to see the Penguins.... there were tons of them and they were quite cute. :)