Oceanography Trip with Jacob

I've been trying to upload pictures from Jacob's Oceanography trip to San Diego the weekend of January 14th for the past week or so, and have had no luck. So for now I'll at least get a few memories down & add the pictures later.

Jacob and I went to the school at 4pm on Friday, Jan 14th and got on the chartered bus to California. I was really happy to go along as a chaperon. There were 3 boys in my group, including Jacob. We drove to San Diego, arriving around 10pm AZ time, 9pm California time. I roomed with another mom who also has 3rd grader and kindergartner, so we felt comfortable cause we see each other at lots of school things. Her name is Nicole. I had a lot of fun visiting with her each night.

The first motel we stayed in was gross. Just old and smelly, if you asked the kids. But for 1 night we were ok. The next morning we were up early and at breakfast by 7:30am. We then went to a pier for our boat excursion to see whales. Before heading out to the ocean they dragged a net in the bay and brought up lots of ocean dwelling fish, crab, sting ray etc. The kids were able to see and touch many of these animals. Then we went out the to ocean to look for dolphins and whales. It didn't take long. No dolphins, but there was a whale & I have a picture of it to prove it. We followed the whale for a little while then had to turn back to home. On the way back in they took us by the fishing bait docks where sea lions hang out hoping for a free meal, again I have pictures. Back on the bus and off to Sea World for the day. We spent about 5 hours at Sea World. I made sure we made it to every show. We saw them all, and we were tired from it. After Sea World, we got back on the bus and went to a pier for dinner. I don't know if it was really good or if we were just really hungry from the day, but it was great. After dinner we walked along the beach to a bon fire. There we had s'mores and campfire stories from the owner of the company sponsoring the trip. The tales all had "shark eating man" themes. Needles to say, it kept our attention.

The second hotel was in LA near Knottsberry Farm. It was much nicer and we were all so tired that it didn't take much to get us a great nights sleep. Sunday morning had us going to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. It was a really great aquarium, again lots of pictures....
Jacob spent the only $3 of his own for the entire trip at the aquarium. He bought nectar to feed the Larakeets, pictures? Of course!

At lunch time we exited the aquarium and had pizzas delivered to a the park area next to the aquarium. After lunch it was back on the bus and start the drive home. One stop for dinner in Blythe and we were home to the school by 9pm.

Talk about quick trip. But it was a totally blast. Kid Karaoke on the way home was too funny. Great laughs and good memories. Jacob has a blast and only had 1 day of high sugar while on the boat looking for the whale. Otherwise he was great.

Hopefully the website will cooperate better with me sometime this week and I'll get those pictures up.