Sea World and the fright of my life

Today we decided to venture to Sea World to play in the kiddy water park and see the Dolphin/Beluga Whale/Acrobat show. It was freakin' crowded...not unexpected as it is Memorial Day weekend, but we went early so expected it to be only moderately crowded - Wrong!

We first headed the the water area as the dolphin petting section was beyond crowded. P-Daddy and the kids entered the play area while L and I stayed outside (she was sleeping). They were having a ton of fun until I noticed C was wandering around by herself and looked confused so I motioned to P-Daddy who was simultaneously motioning to me. I thought he had lost sight of C so I pointed her out to him. Then he looked around, gathered up S and C and came over to me, when I casually asked him "where's X?" His response "with you?". OH SHIT...turns out he was motioning to me to tell me X was coming over to me because he needed to pee. When he turned back after motioning to me, X was gone and he assumed he had come to me. P-Daddy raced off to look for X in the water area with no luck. He came back to see if he was with me at which point I took off yelling his name which was bloody pointless...not a single person stopped to ask what was wrong, or indicate whether they had seen him or not. No one even paid attention to me. I made a circle around the play area and then the panic set in; awful images of the police coming to my door in a few days to tell me they had found his body. As I was about to race back to P-Daddy and the kids to grab a phone and call 911 through an opening in the crowd I spotted a pale-as-can-be shirtless blond kid wandering around looking terrified. I raced to him and swept him up in my arms and went racing to P-Daddy who was so nervous that I don't think he noticed X in my arms because he kept saying "I don't see him, I don't see him" until I actually had to point him out in my arms. Turns out he needed to go to the bathroom. Needless to say he got an extremely stern talking too fueled by utter horror on our part.

We then sat down for a snack (stress eating) and went to the Viva! show which was really cool and involved dolphins, beluga whales and high diving acrobats. Then we headed over to the sharks for a quick peek, then back to the car and out for pizza (I will not rant about the false advertising about coupons and kids eat for free at a certain establishment near my house other than to say we will never frequent this establishment again).

Home for the most glorious activity of all - a 2hr nap with R-dog and R-cat while P-Daddy made noodles and sauce with veggie meatballs. Yummy!

Hopefully I can sleep without nightmares tonight.