Sea World, A.K.A. Stroller Drama

Since Brad's sister Sarah is  here, we wanted to do something fun and take advantage of all the attractions so close in Orlando. We decided to go to Sea World for the weekend.

We fed the dolphins





Ella loved the "Aunt Claire's"


Then we decided to go to the Shamu show.



That's when everything went south. When we came out of the show our stroller was no where to be found. We had left it in the stroller parking area with the other 1,000's of strollers. I was pretty bummed since it was by far my favorite of the 6 strollers I've bought and sold looking for the perfect one (gotta love craigslist). We wandered around for about 45 minutes as we made our way toward guest services to report it stolen. I kept my eyes out hoping I would happen to see it and sure enough, I saw a girl walking by with it. I ran up to her and asked her where she got it.  She made up some story about buying it when her son was born at Babies R Us.  I told her mine had just been stolen and it looked just like mine.  She had taken all my stuff out of it but there were things on it that made me confident it was mine. She started getting really nervous, yelling at her kid and making up a bunch of stories that didn't make sense. We asked her if she would just stand still long enough so we could get security to help us sort it out. She just kept walking and said she really needed to pee and would we just stop following her and let her go to the bathroom. We said sure and followed her to the bathrooms. She took the stroller with her because she had her kid in there and all her bags on it. Brad sent me off to look for security while she was in there. About 15 minutes I came back and she had not come out. I went in to look for her and sure enough there was another exit that she had gone out. By the time we got security to notify the front gate she was long gone.

I was pretty bummed, but we learned some valuable lessons.  1. Don't take a nice stroller to Sea World and if you do, lock it up. 2. Write your name on anything valuable like that.  If I would have had my name written on it, I could have taken it from her right away.

Guest services was nice and gave us some VIP seat to the dolphin show. I have to say, it was much better than the Shamu show which was pretty boring.

Iowa, Phoenix, California

Way back in August we took a trip to Iowa for Brad's grandma's memorial service.



We spent the weekend listening to his mom and grandpa reminisce about growing up in Sioux City and visiting all the places they lived and worked. This used to be the hardware store that his grandpa owned.





This was a diner across the street where they would have lunch


It was nice to meet lots of Brad's family


Ella found a playground she enjoyed


After Iowa, Brad headed home and Ella and I went to Phoenix for work.  The next weekend we took a little trip to LA to see Claire and baby Will.


We actually saw Brad at a bluegrass festival there since he had flown to LA for the weekend for work.