aquarium trip

This morning we joined a few other friends and visited an aquarium.  One of the bazillion reasons I love kids is they encourage me to be excited about almost everything!  I seriously think without kiddos along I would have walked past many of the fish tanks and thought "well, that's neat.... what's next?" 

But they wanted to stop and see every tank, each and every glass window to check out the fish.  Watch them swim, and open their mouths, and look for the babies, and wonder which one is fastest, and marvel at how huge they are, or how funny they look or .....

Well, suffice it to say there was no shortage of conversation!  [Not that I have even one child who lacks for words!  I seriously feared that Isaac might not talk because his two big sisters never gave him a chance to get a word in.  Then he started stringing two and three words together at 15 months and I realized my fears were unfounded.  If our family is to have a child of few words he/she has yet to show up!] 

If there is some trick to taking good photos in an aquarium (dark rooms, lit up tanks, lots of glass) then I haven't discovered it.  By far the best exhibit was a huge aquarium with sharks and manta rays and eels and all sorts of fascinating fish - and by huge I mean you could walk through it in connecting tunnels with floor to ceiling glass walls.  On the far end there was a stadium seating style room where you could watch divers.  The divers acted out a narrated performance (hokey) but the kids were initially captivated by the presence of divers in the tank with all those crazy looking fish!

And after a break for lunch at an outdoor eating pavilion we watched the sea lion show and then headed home.

(sea lions in background, the blond curls belong to us!)

It was a great family outing -  a friend helped us score massively discounted tickets, and we had a real fun time!