Day #1 in San Diego

First off, let me say...Shayna and I had an AMAZING trip to San Diego this last week! We laughed, we joked, we commiserated over terribly sore feet and legs. It was purely awesome bonding time for us as she is about to become a High Schooler on August 24! This is such an exciting time...and yet sad in a way for me as her mom. I just can't believe how much Shayna has grown up in the last few years. On the plus side...she and I are becoming more friends these days...something I was afraid would go the exact opposite direction as she reached her teen years. I am a lucky, blessed mom for sure.

Second let me thank my friend Susan Diller for planting this seed! She had the idea to take her daughter Erica (same age as Shayna and is friends with Shayna) to NYC when she graduated from Elementary to middle school. When she told me about that trip and then followed up with planning a trip to San Francisco with Erica as she switched schools again to a high school - it made me think...Gosh...I should do that with Shayna! She was right...the experience of that trip and the bonding it tightened was so worth every penny spent and the time away from my lovah and my baby girl. So ... thank you Susan! It was an awesome trip and I would never have planned it if you hadn't sparked that fire in me! Love ya girl!

So, Day one of our four full days in San Diego was fab!
We arrived at 10:55pm their time (thanks a lot to price line whom I will never use again---for more reasons than that). I was a little nervous arriving to be honest cause I have not travelled a whole lot on my own so I get a little freaky about details and making sure I get to the right place at the right time. Once that part is done...we are gold. :) So we get to the hotel by riding the shuttle provided by them from the airport. I was sorta giggling that it felt like we never got off the plane cause I'm not kidding when I tell you the entire shuttle was all United flight crew and pilots ... and then there was Shayna and I. haha. My main thought though was ... well, we must have a decent hotel if all the crew and pilots are staying at our hotel! YAY!

We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by a sorta scary guy with a big weird smile. I don't know quite how to explain him other than to say I had a sorta freaky feeling about him - enough to cause some serious bad dreams all night that night. :(
I got over it though and I'm sure he was just a little bit socially inept and I freaked a little. (he looked scary too...like an actor that I have seen in several movies but can't think of his name).

We were exhausted by the time we checked in and dragged our luggage up to the third floor. We got the crappiest room in the hotel - I'm sure of that (thank you Priceline) ... but the beds were comfortable, and the room was clean. We weren't going to complain since we figured we are never going to be in the room anyway except to sleep and shower.

After a decent nights sleep -- night one...down...day one ready to begin.

We spent Day # 1 at Sea World.
My friend Keely who lives in San Diego was nice enough to pick us up and take us there (saving us a $30 cab bill - thank you Keely!!!)
Sea World was quite awesome! We started off the day very hungry. So we bought this bracelet that allows eating all you want all day long (that way I didn't have to drag out $$ all day long and stress about how much we are spending on food). That bracelet turned out to be the BEST deal we got all week long! They were $30 each for adults - Shayna counts as an adult. I was waivering a little bit at the counter over what to do...Shayna is clearly not a kid, so I can't buy her that...but neither of us eats so much that I felt we needed to have two bracelets. That's when the employee told me....you can buy just one and share it..but I didn't tell you that! That was all I needed to hear. We bought one $30 all you can eat bracelet and shared it all day long. We shared each meal - and if it didn't fill us up we went and ate at another restaurant and shared that meal too. We had an entree, side or dessert and a drink at every restaurant we went to! Amazing! The food was really good and for $30 two of us ate 3 meals, had a few desserts when it wasn't meal time and got several bottles of water. ALL INCLUDED IN THAT PRICE! STELLAR!

Our first show was Shamu...gotta do that doncha know. We even went down to his tank before the show (we got there rather early) and got some pics of us at Shamu's tank while he was swimming back and forth.





Shamu was awesome...and touching the starfish in the bay was cool.



However, the highlight of our day was the personal time we got with a dolphin named Kalohi. We were able to enjoy feeding her some fish, petting her, giving her the commands to do some of her tricks, being sneezed on by her and just having fun watching her. It was AWESOME! Our day at Sea World left us with some pretty bad sunburns but some really awesome memories.