Whale Watching on President's Day

For some odd reason, Brad had President's Day off and he found out about it that Friday as he left work. It could be that he always has President's Day off and we just don't remember it, but whatever... we'll take it!

We decided to make it a family day. Since Brad has a great aversion to farms we landed on whale watching out of Long Beach harbor. We left the house early to catch the aquarium's first tour.

Thankfully we brought a blanket, because it was rather "crisp" out on the morning ocean.

Brad and I had taken this tour a couple of years ago without the children and we chanced upon a rare sighting of orcas and the expected couple of whales and what seemed like an ocean teeming over with creatures. I was a bit distracted that trip as I had underestimated how much Simon still nursed. This trip we were very excited about experiencing the trip with children... and no side effects from not nursing.

And for the first hour and a half of the boat ride I could have sworn it was the best bird-watching tour available, because that's all I saw. Lots and lots of birds. 

Then I began my fight sea sickness. It was just enough to be a distraction, so I hibernated on the bench with Simon and the blanket.

While I didn't take pictures of the couple of whale blowholes and one tail that almost sent me over the edge in excitement, we did eventually see more than just the feathered animal. We even saw one pod of dolphins playing in the wake of the boat as it left to return to shore.

It only took us a half hour to get back to shore and the slight of nausea diminished. Now that we had finally seen more than seagulls and I was no longer sick I thoroughly enjoyed our outing.

For lunch we went to Bubba Gumps, so Nathan could have crab legs. The boy tore through six crab legs and once the fun of cracking the shells was over he stopped chewing and said, "I don't think they cooked these right. They don't taste right." So after four years of proclaiming his love for food that is above my culinary ability and grocery budget, it has been decided that Nathan does not like crab legs after all.