Happy Accidents: San Antonio...Take 2

This vacation was so great the first time we decided to do it again. Ok, it didn't hurt that we still had our annual pass from last year so admission into the park was paid for, but if you have kids around the same ages as mine...I can't recommend Sea World, San Antonio enough. Their awesome water park, Aquatica kept us busy for two days. Since this was kind of a repeat vacation though, and we already got pictures of everything last year I took a little break from worrying about capturing every moment, and just enjoyed the moments. I did take my camera to the park one day (of course) and to the Riverwalk but even when I had it I focused a lot more on capturing the little moments between some of the big things we did that sometimes get forgotten about.
After getting home and going through all of the photos I realized that there was a story behind almost every photo I did take this year. Here are a few of them:

Printed out this little car and Marissa colored it and cut it out. Then we marked a ribbon for each hour of hour trip, strung it across the back of the car and moved the car ever time we were an hour closer. Really cut down on the "Are we there yets?" and gave the kids something to look forward to every hour which broke up the trip a bit. :)

Another great "travel with kids tip". Good Kid Clips (Really need to think of a cuter name for these). One for each kid. They stayed up on the visor as long as they were good, came down for whining, fighting, etc. If they were up when we stopped for gas or potty breaks they got a treat at the gas station.

This photo felt a little like a victory because I wasn't sure it was going to happen the night before. We had been traveling all day and were about to find a nice place to stay for the night when a tire on my car decided to start losing air. We ended up in a less than 5 star hotel (ok, motel), but it was close to a Walmart that was able to get the tire fixed at 7 a.m. and get us back on the road and to TEXAS!

Ok, the next two are a bit of a repeat from last year and don't really have a great story to them other than Chase really likes sharks and they are pretty cool to look at and photograph.

A couple more repeats from last year but I like how I caught the fish in mid air between the kids and the dolphins in the first one.

...and this is just plain cute.

Don't take too many candid shots of hubby, but there was just something about the moment.

Giant sand sculpture in front of Aquatica

Just in time! Kids were the last ones to get pictures with Shamu before he went on break.

Who knew Shamu was a comedian?

Yay! Marissa wasn't tall enough for this ride last year. She loved it (despite burying her face in daddy in this photo).

Maybe I'm being tour guide here???

Last year we were in the heavy duty splash zone for the Shamu show so my camera stayed safely stashed away in a dry place and we didn't get pictures. Marissa got a face full of salt water from Shamu though and decided we wouldn't be sitting there this year.

Having fun is tiring.

Bay of Play is a good place to wake everyone up!

Oh Chase. There is never a dull moment. He loves having his face submerged in as much water as possible. A few things to note from this photo...1)This water was pretty powerful and 2)The kids staring at Chase

I told you the water was powerful! And now there are several people staring...and laughing!

Again...water directly into his face and again...multiple people staring. DO NOT take this kid anywhere if you feel like laying low.

Long story here. All of the lockers appeared to be taken so I had no dry place to store our stuff...mainly my precious camera. Since trying to keep track of two children who are running in different directions while I'm being squirted in the face randomly and without warning wasn't my idea of relaxing anyway- I volunteered to sit by the lockers and take the photos while waiting for one to open up. Many people came, took their belongings and left, but no one left a locker key. Finally Chad came and confronted someone and asked if they were going to leave the key so someone else could use the locker. They guy said "Uh, I have to take it back to get my deposit back". Ok, last year you put your quarters in and got the key. Guess they changed it. Oh well, mommy got some time to chill and also grabbed this shot while Marissa came to hang out for a bit.

Yeah, I took this same photo last year too, but I like it. And it's my blog. So there.

Don't let my husbands Oscar worthy performance fool you. This was a kiddie roller coaster. Not high, not fast, not scary.

Cool statue thingy near the Riverwalk. Probably has a cool story behind it. One that I don't know.

Just a few cool Riverwalk photos. We took a boat tour again. Kids didn't find it super exciting last year. This year they fell asleep. I still enjoyed it though.

American Idol auditions were being held in San Antonio while we were there. This was their camera crew shooting scenes of the city for the episode. Our boat driver pulled over to pretend like something was wrong with our boat so that they could pass and we could yell and wave and maybe get on camera, but they sped right on by.