meeting mermaids

The twins and I had a fun mommy daughter date at the Tall Ships Festival and Mermaid Breakfast in Dana Point on a beautiful Saturday morning! The twins loved walking around on the ships and hearing the boom of the cannons, as well as touching sharks and other sea creatures at the Ocean Institute.

Maybe next year we’ll get tickets for the pirate show where they take you out the ships, give you a job swabbing the deck and what not, and reenact a sea battle.

The tall ships were cool, but the twins’ favorite part of the morning by far was attending a special Mermaid Breakfast where they made crowns, gobbled up a pancake breakfast, listened to a mermaid read stories, and visited a swimming mermaid in the tank! There was another set of twins at our table and it was hilarious listening to both sets of twins vehemently argue whether or not the mermaids were real (Samantha would not budge on her theory that the mermaids were just humans dressed up as mermaids).

Starstruck when meeting the “human mermaid.”

Meeting more mermaids! I felt so bad for “Mermaid Rachel” swimming in the tank… she looked like she really regretted signing up for this gig! She would surface for a few minutes to catch her breath and would then dive back under, blowing bubbles and flipping her tail around for as long as she could hold her breath, before jetting back up, gasping for air with water streaming down her face and ruining her makeup.

The kids all thought it was awesome, of course, but it looked like a hard job! It didn’t help that the passive aggressive red-headed mermaid was constantly ordering her around, telling her to go back under and show the kids a flip or to resurface and answer questions about life under the sea (she couldn’t hear under the water, obviously, and the passive aggressive mermaid seemed agitated that she kept having to repeat instructions!) I almost gave her Jake’s employment law attorney card.