Fun Visitor

 The last two days we had an awesome visit with my brother for two days this week. We were pretty much going nonstop. We had a lot of fun and were so happy to have him here. The girls were in heaven, they attached themselves to him immediately and were sad to have him leave.
David flew into Long Beach so we drove up to there and went to the Aquarium of the Pacific. The aquarium was pretty cool, a bit over priced. The weather was perfect and of course I took lots of pictures the whole trip.

That is a huge sea bass! (insert Dumb and Dumber quote here)

We got to see a shark feeding

That is a seal swimming out of the picture. The seal/sea lion show was so incredible!

I'm not sure what this huge fish is, but look in the upper left hand corner. That is a giant spider crab!!!

Seahorses for my sis. (Are they dancing? :-)

This is Rainbow Harbor. I think it'd be a really pretty walk to the lighthouse.

 After the aquarium we drove down the coast to Balboa Island and then took the ferry to Balboa Village.

Out on the pier. There were no waves, so peaceful!

My little cutie

Of course they have to play in the sand any chance they get.

Everyone is squinting due to the sun but I had to include the sign in my pics!

My mom came down here last year for her anniversary and just raved about Balboa Bars. I hadn't tried them yet, so we decided to get some. They were good, but I don't think we like them as much as my parents did.

 That night we showed David where we like to go to the beach and saw the Oceanside pier. The waves were a lot more exciting down here than they were in Newport. I was bummed it was cloudy, we couldn't see the sunset.

David took this pic

 The next day we took David to the place we know best, the Zoo!!! I was able to go to a lot of places at the zoo I had never been. We went everywhere and pretty much pushed everyone into exhaustion, but we saw a lot and rode the skyfari for the first time and it was awesome!

My little bugs

I hadn't seen the Ocelot at the zoo yet. Such a pretty cat. We also saw fossa, turtles and other awesome stuff for the first time.

A meerkat had just run past the glass, so the girls were intrigued.

There are ducks all over the zoo. Since it's spring, that means there are ducklings all over too. They are the cutest things ever. The flamingo eggs should be hatching soon too, so I would love to go back and see those! **Fun fact** Flamingos make mounds of mud as their nests and sit on them during incubation. The bigger the flock, the better success for babies.

These greater one-horned rhinos are brothers, ages 5 and 7. As we walked past them they started fighting. (Do you know any young brothers that don't like fighting?) They just kept at it to the point that they were drawing blood! It was crazy. You need to try to find a video of these guys running. You'd think they would run like they are heavy, but they're so agile!! It was cool to see. Eventually a zookeeper came and separated them and made sure they were okay.

The bears are almost always laying down but the grizzlies and this guy were up and active. I don't know what kind it is (our bus tour guide wasn't the greatest)

We were walking past the alligator habitat and I couldn't find it. Finally David spotted it. Here is a shot under the water. It was camouflaged very well. Like David said, "Yeah, we'd be dead" (if in the wild)

Ty got done with school right before we were finished so he came down and joined us.

I told you everyone was exhausted after the zoo. (I'm a little exhausted writing this long post about it!)

I hope you are doing well and if you want to come see all these things, come on down! :-) Thanks so much for coming, David! We had a blast!