Cocoa Beach Florida, and a visit to the Quitman cemetery

We took a short trip to Cocoa beach Florida after SeaWorld. It was another highlight of the trip. We spent a day and a half on the beach and relaxed as much as you can with 4 kids.

Sweet Truman sat so patiently on the beach.

The kids loved playing in the sand!

Richie's sand drawing. A shark and "Richie."

The kids loved playing in the waves.

Adam holding the clam he found in the water. He was very torn about whether or not he should take it back to the hotel. He kept asking, "what would be the easiest way?" I think he meant to say, what is the right thing to do. In the end he gave the clam to Richie to take back to the hotel. The next day he took the clam back to the beach, but it was already a goner. After he knew we were keeping the clam shell he took it back from Richie. That's one way to avoid the guilt of taking the clam from his home.

Richie covered in "glue."

Collecting shells on the beach was one of the highlights of the beach for the boys.

The infamous clam

Adam wearing the sunglasses he found in the surf.

We stopped by the cemetery that is the final resting place of my Brother Joshua, my Papa George, and my Mamateel, (my mom's father and mother).

Mamateel's head stone

My brother Joshua's headstone

The magnolia that overlooks all of their head stones.

SeaWorld In Pictures

Ultimately SeaWorld was a lot of fun, not quite as much fun for the kids as we hoped it would have been, but overall it was a good time. We waited to tell the kids we were going until the morning of our first day at the park. When we first told them, they looked at each other in excitement. Then they started to talk about the pirate pool at our hotel. They were more worried about swimming at the pool than going to SeaWorld. We took the hotel shuttle service to the park, (that was our first mistake). Later in the day, after a fair amount of complaining about walking all day long, a couple melt downs, etc., the boys kept asking when we could go back to the hotel to swim in the pool. If we had known how much they wanted to swim we would have saved ourselves a few hundred dollars . . . :) We did see some great shows, rode a few rides, but it wasn't until we went to the kids play area that the kids really started to have fun. They liked playing in the sand box and on the slides more than they enjoyed the "real" rides and shows.

Day 2 went significantly better than day 1. We drove our own car, so we had the option of leaving early if we wanted. We started off by going to the Shamu show, it was the highlight of the trip. We were able to pet some dolphins and some rays. Richie rode the Atlantis roller-coaster with Dan and Adam rode the kid roller-coaster with me. We did have a good time, we just might wait until the kids are all a few years older to go back.

Sam, not too happy before the show.

Sharkie came along for the entire trip.

Adam got wet from the fountains outside the Shamu show. We were in the "splash zone," but we had 2 ponchos that kept most of the water off.

Getting ready for the Shamu show.

Richie with the star of the Shamu show.

The end of day 2

The boys each were able to pick one toy from the gift shop before we left. Adam chose an octopus and Richie filled a tube with little wales and sharks.