Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Rather than have a birthday party, we decided to take a family trip to San Diego to take Avery to Sea World for the first time.  It started with a very lengthy car ride to Burbank to drop off Quincy at his friend Rally's house, then poor Avery was such a trooper through traffic, missed exits, unknown destination for lunch, more missed turns.  All told she sat in the car for 5 hours but even as we neared our destination she remained in good spirits, undressing baby and playing with her baby's outfit.
SeaWorld has a whole Sesame Street area with rides and water play. Avery and Daddy went on Elmo's ride, then we all went on Abby's ride (very teacup-like, blech!!).  Avery was so happy to see all her favorite Sesame Street characters with their very own rides.  We also went to the 4-D Elmo movie.  I will say, probably not the best first movie for a 2 year old, given the 3-d glasses, the water spraying on your legs and the huge cookie flying at your face.  She ended up turned around facing me, all snuggled in, quite afraid of the whole experience.  But now she remembers it fondly, so that is good.

Here we are waiting for the Shamu Believe! show to begin.  Not an ounce of shade to be found, FYI.  But we grabbed the first show at 11 am so it wasn't too terribly hot yet.  Avery seemed to really like it but she got very sleepy mid-way through and needed some snuggles while she looked over her shoulder at Shamu.  Jon and I really enjoyed the show, so much so that we didn't capture any photos of the beautiful whale.

  

Oh my, look at that polar bear.  Avery really liked looking at the single polar bear we got to see.  So much so that when we exited the area and entered the store (that is present after all rides/exhibits with correlating stuffed animals, key rings, posters, etc.) she started picking up one polar bear, hugging it, setting it down and picking up another one.  We felt she had to have a memento from our day and bought her a little polar bear.  We were determined that she not name it 'Polar Bear' so we gave her a few recommendations, let her think it through and she's settled on 'Whitey', and the name has stuck.  Whitey it is, appropriate for her little white polar bear.  Happy Birthday Avery Mae!