A FLIGHT TO ORLANDO & A DAY IN SEAWORLD

As I write this, we're coming to the end of a very long day. Yesterday, eight of us-- David, Angela, Alex, Christian, Katherine, (David's sister and niece) Diane and Karlie and I-- took to the friendly skies and headed from New Orleans to Orlando. For Christian and Katherine, it was their first airplane flight and it was Alex's second flight following a trip he took with his parents to San Diego when he was a year old. The flight was great. The eight of us sat in the front two rows of the plane and that was perfect since that as close as you can get to the plane's bathroom.

On Saturday, Diane, Karlie and I took the kids to Seaworld and the weather was flawless-- a high around 80 and not a cloud in the sky. The boys were really excited about seeing killer whales and sharks and Shamu was one of our first stops.

Talk about good seats. Even though the arena was almost completely full by the time we arrived, we were able to get these really great seats up front. Our seats were just about eye-level with the top of the tank, thus allowing us a great view of the whales when they were both under water and when they were flying through the air.

The kids were really loving the show and about 20 minutes into it I began to marvel at just how lucky we had been. Even though our seats were marked "SOAK ZONE", the whales hadn't splashed the first drop of water on us.

It had been so long since my last trip to Seaworld that I didn't even realize that we hadn't already seen Shamu until they announced him and this huge whale appeared. The kids were all mesmerized by this giant mammal zipping across the tank and the next thing we see is a whale out of water followed by a solid wall of water headed right at us.

We got DRENCHED! Two more waves of water soon followed and I couldn't stop laughing. With the kids, it wasn't a laughing matter. The waves of water scared them and all three were crying at once.

Soaked, shivering and tasting salty, I suggested to Diane that we retreat to higher ground. We left the arena with the show still in progress and tried to calm down three very wet children.

From there we caught a few more shows and went to the shark exhibit and the penguin exhibit. While David and Angela rested at the hotel room and watched the LSU-Alabama game, the kids were getting up close and personal with marine life.

After we returned to the hotel, David and Angela went to a nearby Mexican restaurant and the rest of us went swimming at our hotel.

In the morning, David and Angela are taking one plane to Raleigh, Diane and Karlie are taking the kids back to Louisiana on another flight and I'm going to stick around here for a little longer.